Screen Erosion Guidelines for Sand Control Completion and Sand Production Management. Case Study West Delta Deep Marine (WDDM) Offshore Egypt

Abstract

The West Delta Deep Marine (WDDM) fields are a Pliocene gas fields located in offshore Nile Delta, approximately 120km North-East of Alexandria, Egypt. These fields are comprised of sandstone reservoirs which are dominated by unconsolidated sandstone. Sand production has become one of the main issues in WDDM since the discovery of a hole in the body of a liquid outlet valve from the onshore slug catcher. On further inspection, it was discovered that the hole had developed due to the presence of sand/fines causing erosion at the interface in the liquid handling system. Scarab-Saffron field was the primary source of sand production in WDDM with screen failure as the cause of the problem. This paper details a method for determining maximum safe production rates for sand control wells. This method was developed from a thorough compilation of data from around 51 sand control wells. As a result of this analysis, a simple function of screen erosion limit has proved to be very reliable at identifying wells operating safely from those resulting in damaged screens or unacceptable amounts of produced sand.

Study on the Erosion of Screen Pipe Caused by Sand-Laden Slurry

“…The same authors reported that the change in flow channel and flow pattern by screen and annulus plugging constituted an important factor for the failure of a screen. Some previous works (Zamberi and Shaffee, 2014;Mnhmoud and Ali., 2015;Sidek and Lian, 2017) focused on the problem of screen failure and, based on experimental work and numerical simulations, suggested that the erosion of screen by sand-laden slurry can be reduced by measures, including introduction of ceramic screens, controlling of the production speed, conducting sand control management, and using a flow divider. In short, there are numerous reasons and factors that may contribute to the failure of a sand screen.…”