Prediction of Productivity Decline in Oil and Gas Wells Due to Fines Migration: Laboratory and Mathematical Modelling

Abstract

Suspension-colloidal transport in porous media with the particle detachment usually exhibits a significant permeability decline. It occurs due to mobilisation and migration of detached colloidal or suspended fines with their straining in thin pores of the rock. Numerous laboratory coreflood tests show that the time for permeability stabilisation counts for hundreds of injected pore volumes, while the classical filtration theory assumes the released fines transport by the bulk of the carrier fluid yielding one pore volume injection to stabilise the permeability. In the current paper, the stabilisation delay effect is explained by slow drift of the mobilised fines near to pore walls. The basic flow equations for a single-phase particle transport in porous media with velocity lower than the carrier fluid velocity are proposed, and the analytical model for one dimensional flow with particle release and straining under the piece wise increasing velocity is derived. The laboratory data are in a good agreement with the results of mathematical modelling. The analytical model for well inflow performance is developed. It successfully matches several field cases.

A New Phenomenon of Slow Fines Migration in Oil and Gas Fields (Laboratory and Mathematical Modelling)

“…The stabilisation times versus velocity from all the tests in Table 2 are presented in Figure 9. The mathematical model derived by Siqueira et al (2014) and You et al (2016) is applied to the treatment of impedance data obtained from the coreflood test (Fig. 7a).…”

Rock permeability evolution during cyclic loading and colloid migration after saturation and drying

“…Currently, using porous underground rocks as natural reservoirs for storing natural gas and hydrogen is highly relevant (Liu et al, 2010;Metwally and Sondergeld, 2011;Heller et al, 2014;Wu et al, 2023). Aquifers and depleted oil and gas fields are used for underground gas storage (Siqueira et al, 2014;Haghi et al, 2018;Gao et al, 2020;Ge et al, 2022;Almutairi et al, 2023). During the operation of natural reservoirs, the injection and extraction of gases cause seasonal cyclic changes in reservoir pressure.…”