Sand production potentials ỉn petroleum wells at VietNam

Abstract

Sand production is usually related to petroleum wells in unconsolidated and weakly consolidated formations. The sand produced during exploration and exploitation operations will seriously affect the reservoir quality, reduce the recovery factor, cause rapid erosion of the equipment, etc. resulting in significant damages to the investors. This study aims to predict the potentials of sand production in petroleum wells at Nam Con Son basin, offshore Vietnam. The predictive model of sand production is established from reservoir geomechanical model using the shear failure criterion. It could calculate critical pressures along the well depths such as critical bottom-hole pressures (CBHFP), critical drawdown pressures (CDP), critical reservoir pressures (CRP). A calculating program written by MATLAB programming language is also developed to describe the critical pressure charts along the well depths and allow to evaluate the impacts of parameters such as the depleted reservoir pressures, rock strengths, etc. Based on these obtaining charts and their analyses for the studied petroleum wells at Nam Con Son basin, the sand production potentials are evaluated and predicted The appropriate production depths of the studied wells will be selected to mitigate the sand appearance, to have appropriate measures for well completion and production as well as to draw up a reasonable reservoir management strategy.