Sand Production

Prepared by: Eng. Mohamed Omar

Senior Reservoir Engineer
Amal Petroleum Company (AMAPETCO)

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 Contents
 Introduction
 Rock Failure Mechanisms
 Methods of Sand Control
 Geo-Mechanics
 Stresses
 Effective Stress
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 Rock Mechanical
Properties
 Experimental Tests
 Mohr Coloumb
 Factors Affecting Rock’s
Strength
 Sand Production Prediction
Methods
10/8/2022
 Introduction
 Several researches have mentioned that 70% of hydrocarbon
reserves are allocated in poorly consolidated reservoirs.
 50% of the current wells are subjected to sand production during
its production life.
 Sand Production doesn’t always occur from the beginning of the
reservoir’s life but may occur after some depletion that causes
change in the effective stresses magnitude and orientation.

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 Introduction

Sand control installed by schlumberger in over 30 countries worldwide

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 Introduction

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 Introduction

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 Introduction

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 Introduction
 Types of Sand:

 Zero Strength Sand

 Damp Sand

 Weakly Cemented Sand

 Consolidated Sand

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 Definition
 Sand production is usually related to the
following two mechanisms:

 Mechanical Instabilities and localized

failure of the rock in the vicinity of the

wellbore due to stress concentration.

 Hydro-Mechanical Instabilities due to

internal and surface erosion caused by

the action of seepage forces.

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 Definition

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 Impact of Sand Production
Area
Reservoir
Subsurface Equipment
Surface Installation Sand Accumulation
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Problem Effect
Access Restricted to production Interval
Well-bore Fill Loss of Productivity
Loss of Reserves
Malfunctioning / Damage of DHSV
Sand Fouling Difficult Wire-line Operation
Frequent Equipment Failure
Erosion
Frequent Equipment
Malfunction of Control Equipment
Loss of Capacity
Un-scheduled Shut-downs
Deferred Production
Sand Separation and Disposal 10/8/2022
 Impact of Sand Production

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 Impact of Sand Production
 High Completion Costs
 Work-Over Operations
 Well Integrity and HSE Risks
 Low Production Rates

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 Methods of Sand Control
 Mechanical Sand Control
 Screen
 Gravel Pack
 Chemical Sand Control
 Resin Consolidation
 Production Control
 Bean-up Strategy
 Critical Rate

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 Methods of Sand Control

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 Types of Sand Production:
 Transient Sand Production
 Perforation
 Acidizing
 Continuous Sand
Production
 Catastrophic Sand
Production

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 Rock Failure Mechanisms
 Mechanical Failure
 Compression Failure
 Tensile Failure
 Pore Collapse
 Cohesion

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 Rock Failure Mechanisms
 Chemical Failure
 Water Production
 Acidizing

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 Geo-Mechanics
 This involves the study of mechanics of soil and rocks.
 Rock Mechanics deals with issues in geosciences related to
rock mass characterization and rock mass mechanics.
 Many aspects of geo-mechanics overlap with parts
of geotechnical engineering, engineering geology, and
geological engineering.

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 Geo-Mechanics
Production
Parameters
Reservoir
Petrophysics
Parameters

Drilling Structural
Parameters Geology

Rock
Geophysics Geomechanics
Mechanics

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 Geo-Mechanics

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 Geo-Mechanics
 Applications of Geo-mechanics:
 Determine Mud Weight Window
 Optimize Drilling Operations
 Design Fracture Operations
 Predict Sand Production Conditions
 Study Subsidence
 Fault Seal Analysis

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 Geo-Mechanics

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 Geo-Mechanics

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 Geo-Mechanics

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 Stresses
 In general, stress is defined as average force acting over an
area.
 Since the stress is a force per unit area, it is independent on the
size of the body.

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 Stresses


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 Stresses
 There are Different types
acting:
 Overburden Stress
 Maximum Horizontal
Stress
 Minimum Horizontal
Stress

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 Stresses

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 Stresses

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 Stresses

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 Stresses

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 Stresses
 Overburden Stress
 The pressure exerted by the total weight of overlying
formations above the point of interest.
 The total weight is the combined weight both the formation
solids and formation fluids in the pore space.

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 Stresses

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 Stresses
 Minimum Horizontal Stress
 There are several methods to
calculate it through leak-off
tests and through Equations.
 It is important to detect the
orientation of the minimum
horizontal for fracture
operations design.

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 Stresses

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 Stresses

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 Stresses
 Minimum Horizontal Stress Calculation:

 Maximum Horizontal Stress Calculation:

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 Effective Stresses


 Critical Pore Pressure is the pore

pressure at which a rock failure
is expected to occur below this
pressure.

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 Rock’s Mechanical Properties

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 Rock’s Mechanical Properties
 Young’s Modulus (E):
 Young’s Modulus is the stress
needed to compress the solid to
shorten in a unit strain.
 Poisson’s Raito (ν):
 Poisson’s Ratio measures the
relatively of the expansion in the
lateral directions and
compression in the direction of
compression.

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 Rock’s Mechanical Properties
 Bulk’s Modulus (K)
 It is the stress applied to cause a unit change in volume.

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 Rock’s Mechanical Properties

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 Rock’s Mechanical Properties


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 Rock Mechanical Tests

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 Rock Mechanical Tests

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 Mohr’s Coloumb Envelope

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 Mohr’s Coloumb Envelope

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 Mohr’s Coloumb Envelope

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 Mohr’s Coloumb Envelope

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 Mohr’s Coloumb Envelope

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 Mohr’s Coloumb Envelope

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 Factors Affecting Sand Production
Rock and Reservoir Properties
• Rock Strength
• Tectonic Stress
• In-situ Stress
• Fluid Viscosity
Type of Well Completion
• Trajectory
• Perforation
Production
• Flow Rate
• Draw-down Pressure
• Reservoir Pressure Depletion

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 Factors Affecting Rock’s Strength
 Formation Depth:
Strength increases with depth in the
brittle region due to the increasing
normal stress, and then decreases with
depth in the ductile region due to
increasing temperature.

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 Factors Affecting Rock’s Strength
 Porosity

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 Factors Affecting Sand Production
 Cementing Materials
 The strength of rock cemented
by clay is the poorest, that
cemented by calcium is strong,
and while that is cemented by
silicon is the strongest.

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 Factors Affecting Rock’s Strength
 Particle size:

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 Factors Affecting Rock’s Strength
 Bedding Effect

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 Factors Affecting Rock’s Strength
 Water Saturation
 Oil-bearing rock is usually water-wet.
 Irreducible water is around 10 - 25%
 Both oil and water reduce the strength
of the rock significantly.
 Water has large effect.

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 Sand Production Prediction Tools
Field Physical Analytical Numerical
Observations Model Testing Relationships Models

One Parameter Thick Wall FEM

Method Cylinder Test

Two Parameters DEM

Method

Multi-Parameter
Method

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 Field Observations
Rock Reservoir Completion Production

• Strength • Far Field Pore Pressure • Wellbore Orientation • Flow Rate

• Acting • Permeability • Wellbore Diameter • Drawdown Pressure
Stresses • Fluid Type • Completion Type • Flow Velocity
• Depth • Drainage Radius • Sand Control Method • Damage (skin)
• Reservoir Thickness • Size of Tubular • Bean-up / Shut-in Policy
• Artificial Lift Technique
• Water/Gas Coning

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 Field Observations
One Parameter Method Two Parameters Method

 One parameter prediction method is

considered to be the simplest form.

 One parameter prediction method has a

major drawback that it only judges if

there will be a sand production or not.

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 Field Observations
Multi-Parameter Method
 Also multi parameters technique is the most accurate field observation method
in determining whether the sand production will be problematic, it requires
large amount of data that may require continuous monitoring and
measurement.

 In 1999, MazenY.Kanj and Younane were able to build a neural network that
could predict the sand production rate using several input parameters including
porosity, shale content, oil’s API gravity and the production drawdown.

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 Physical Model Testing
 Thick Wall Cylinder Test

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 Physical Model Testing

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 Analytical Method
 Determine critical conditions for sand production.

 Can’t be used in case of complex geometries and conditions or

complicated subsurface structures.

 Can be grouped under two broad categories: Models based on a Tensile

Failure Criterion and those based on Shear Failure Criterion.

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 Analytical Method

ESF: Effective Strength Factor 2-2.5 for open-hole completion, 2.5-3.0 for cased
and perforated completion.

The maximum total plastic strain induced around the bore-hole is calculated
numerically and compared with the total plastic strain corresponding to onset of
bore-hole failure in an advanced TWC test.

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 Analytical Method
 Wilson Approach

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 Numerical Modeling
FEM
 Matters are treated and assumed as
continuous in deriving the governing
differential equations.
 The continuity assumption indicates
that the material can’t be divided into
smaller fragments.
 Can’t capture local discontinuous sand
production phenomenon.
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DEM
 Promising approach to simulate
phenomena such as detachment of
individual particles from the rock
matrix.
 Each particle of the granular media is
considered as an individual entity with
a geometric representation of its
surface topology and a description of
its physical state.
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 Finite Element Method

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 Discrete Element Method
Sand production is a continuous and dynamic process that occurs at the
microscopic scale and the rock becomes a dis-continuum in nature.
Conventional continuum approaches can’t capture local dis-continuous
phenomena.
Discontinuum approach is promising to simulate phenomena such as detachment
of individual particles from the rock matrix.
In the Discrete Element Method, the interaction of the particles is treated as a
dynamic process and a state of equilibrium is reached whenever the internal forces
are equal to the external forces.

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 Numerical Modeling

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