Analytical investigation of well/perforation scale effect on sand production of weakly consolidated sandstones
Soroush Tehrani A , Mohammad Sarmadivaleh A , Ahmadreza Younessi Sinaki B , Masood Mostofi A and Massoud Bayati AA Australian Resource Research Centre, Curtin University
B Baker Hughes
The APPEA Journal 56(1) 405-414 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ15029
Published: 2016
Abstract
Investigating the risk of sand production is a common practice for developing unconsolidated and weakly consolidated reservoirs, particularly with designing the completion system of development wells. The risk of sanding may be different for open hole and cased and perforated completion systems. Part of this difference is a result of the different size of the boreholes—that is, open hole versus perforation tunnels— which is known as borehole scale effect. The amount of research dedicated to investigate the borehole scale effect on sand production is very limited. Research has been carried out by conducting thick-walled cylinder (TWC) tests on samples with different inner to outer diameter ratios. The impacts of sample size and boundaries on the induced stresses around the borehole and failure were, however, not differentiated from the borehole scale effect.
In this paper, a comprehensive analytical approach is performed to investigate the effect of the size of the sample and boundaries on TWC tests and borehole failure. To do this, four different failure criteria—Mohr-Coulomb, Drucker-Prager, Mogi and modified Lade—are compared with previously published experimental results.
The analysis shows that the size of the sample and the boundaries may significantly change the TWC strength of the rock. The TWC changes by different inner to outer diameter ratios, however, may not be fully justified by the analytical approach. Hence, a scale effect factor must be introduced to replicate the experimental results.
Soroush Tehrani is an offshore completion and well intervention engineer with more than eight years of experience, specialising in coiled tubing, slickline, perforation, acidising and thru-tubing fishing operation. His educational background is in petroleum production engineering (BSc), and he has a master’s degree in reservoir engineering. After eight years of industrial experience Soroush decided to continue his research in geomechanics with a focus on sand production. He is now doing research at Curtin University as a PhD student. soroush.tehrani@curtin.edu.au |
Mohammad Sarmadivaleh is a lecturer at the Department of Petroleum Engineering, Curtin University, and leads the Curtin Petroleum Geomechanics Group (CPGG). Mohammad received his PhD from Curtin University in numerical and experimental studies on hydraulic fracturing in 2012. Mohammad’s research interests include hydraulic fracturing, sanding, geomechanical reservoir modelling, and CO2 sequestration studies. Presently, he supervises 10 HDR students and participates in academic and industrial research projects. Mohammad.sarmadivaleh@curtin.edu.au |
Ahmadreza Younessi Sinaki received his PhD in petroleum engineering from Curtin University in 2012. After completing his MSc in rock mechanics engineering in 2006 from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran, Iran), Ahmadreza started his career as a geomechanics engineer in Schlumberger’s data and consulting services. He was involved with several consulting projects in Iran, India and Malaysia until 2009. He also trained as a wireline field engineer during his career in Schlumberger. He then started his PhD in 2009, focusing on sand production mechanism under true-triaxial stress conditions. During his PhD he was involved with several consultant geomechanics projects in Australia, conducted from the Curtin Petroleum Geomechanics Group (CPGG). Ahmadreza joined Baker Hughes’ geomechanics team in 2012. Since then he has been involved in numerous projects including 1D and 3D geomechanical modelling, wellbore stability analysis, near-real-time analysis, sand production prediction, 3D dynamic modelling, fault reactivation analysis, and compaction and subsidence analysis. Ahmadreza.YounessiSinaki@bakerhughes.com |
Masood Mostofi is a researcher and lecturer at the Petroleum Engineering Department at Curtin University. In the past five years at Curtin, Masood has been collaborating with the Deep Exploration Technology Corporative Research Centre and CSIRO in hard rock drilling research. Particularly, Masood has been working on diamond bit/rock interaction, drilling optimisation, hole cleaning, and lag time analysis of cuttings. Masood.mostofi@curtin.edu.au |
Massoud Bayati is a PhD student in petroleum engineering at Curtin University. After completing his MSc in rock mechanics engineering in 2006 from Amirkabir University of Technology, Massoud started his career as a geomechanics engineer. He has been involved in several consulting projects in civil engineering. massoud.bayati@curtin.edu.au |
