Laboratory Study of Sand Production in Unconsolidated Reservoir

Abstract

Sand production is a major operational and economical concern in the oil industry due to the potential risk of well failure, limited productivity, erosion of facilities, and increased operating expense. Experimental studies play an important role in understanding the behavior of sand production under different conditions. However, the existing traditional sand production experiments such as thick-walled, cylinder approach or perforation collapse test are only able to predict the onset of sanding and cannot be used to analyze sand production performance over time. In this work, preliminary empirical sanding prediction was performed based on well log data and the formation mechanical properties. The steady-state core flooding tests and core swelling tests were applied to simulate and investigate how the volumetric sand production changes with different flow rates, water saturations and the salinity of injected water. The cores and crude oil samples from an unconsolidated sandstone reservoir in China were used in the tests. The sand flow rate, accumulative sand volume and relative permeability were measured during the sand production process. The experimental results indicated that the sand production rose at the beginning and declined with the increase of flow rate. During the early water-free production stage, the skeleton sand was not destroyed under realistic reservoir/well flow conditions so that the oil production with sanding was preferred. However, as water saturations increased from 20% to 80%, the permeability decreased by 80% accompanied by dramatic increase in sand production. This is due to the high content of Kaolinite, Illite and Montmorillonite with weak cement in the core which swells significantly and blocks the porosity once it is subjected to the water influx. Therefore, sand control should be considered when water saturation is over 20%. The change of sand production rate demonstrated that both the transient and continuous sand production could be involved in this reservoir. In addition, it is expected that the lower salinity of injected water aggravates the sand production.

A sensitivity study of relevant parameters on sand production in unconsolidated sandstone reservoirs

“…Sanding related studies can go back to the 1920's, and before the 1970's, most studies were associated with sand control, and then the interests shifted to the determination of onset of sand production and a MohrCoulomb (M-C) type shear failure was initially postulated (Luo et al, 2012).…”