On the Development of an in-House Fines Stabilizer to Control Formation Damage

Abstract

Almost all Malaysian hydrocarbon-bearing sandstone reservoirs contain minerals which are potential sources of mobile fine particles. For this reason, formation damage in injection and production wells has been frequently associated with the migration of fines in reservoir pores. In this work, an effective, novel, environment friendly and cost beneficial fines stabilizer is formulated in-house. The developed chemical works on the principles of coagulation and flocculation. Different coagulant and flocculant chemical combinations are trialed, and the understanding of their performance is shared using turbidity and zeta potential testing. The developed fines stabilizer chemical is later tested for compatibility with reservoir fluids and production chemicals of a field which is planning to apply fines stabilizer. Based on the potentiality in static screening results of turbidity, zeta potential and compatibility, a fines stabilizer is chosen for dynamic testing. The constraint of critical flow rate for fines migration is addressed in dynamic study using core flood experimentation. Critical flow rates are determined by forward and reverse injection into core samples. Accordingly, the performance of in-house synthesized fines stabilizer is judged by enhancement in critical flow rate in comparison to untreated and commercial fines stabilizer treated cores. Since the constraint from the critical rate effects injectivity and productivity, modification of this constraint and increase of the critical rate consequently provides more economic benefit. The additional revenue from oil production by using the in-house developed fines stabilizer chemical is estimated, and the costs are compared with a commercial fines stabilizer. The uniqueness of this endeavor is in developing an in-house fines stabilizer chemical which can be used after acidizing, enhanced oil recovery treatment, in production and injection wells. The synthesized in-house formulation is more effective and cost saving compared to commercial fines stabilizer.