Sand management has become in one of the most vital factors in today's upstream oil and gas industry, more and more are the cases where the sand control systems play an important factor to determine the economic viability of each project. This paper will focus in a solution for sand problems in ESP systems applying to sand slug breakdown using a 10 V-Mesh Sand Screen to homogenize the solid inflow in the system so it would be easier to handle the solids through the ESP's stages. The implementation of the screen intake for the homogenization of solids in an ESP well allowed to efficiently manage sand slugs, improving the pump efficiency and avoiding blocking problems in the pump caused by sand. Furthermore, the system allows increasing the frequency of operation of the ESP motor to have a greater drawdown, increasing the production of the fluid from 1600 BFPD to 1800 BFPD. The behavior of the sensor data such as vibration, current, and voltage remained stable throughout the period evaluated, extending the run life of the system.

Improving ESP performance has become one of the main challenges in gassy wells. Different methods and new technologies have been developed but most of them have high economic value. A new system has been created to prevent large amounts of gas flowing directly into the pump intake through the breaking of the gas slugs and the resolubilization (dispersion) of the free gas into the production liquid. The system contains an isolation section which allows to break gas slugs and pressurize that section forcing the gas to go in solution to be produced afterwards. The concept of the new technology is to manage the Rs (Gas in solution) with pressure, additionally the technology includes a vortex effect creator which will improve the gas dispersion iton the liquid associated and will separate the sand production. The ESP’s Downhole Regulator was designed based on each well conditions to maximize its efficiency. This paper summarizes the design and application of the new Vortex Regulator in more than 50 gassy wells completed in the Wolfcamp A, Wolfcamp B, Lower Spraberry, and Jo Mill C in the Permian basin. The performance evaluation was carried out by a constant monitoring of the sensor parameters through a certain period. During the evaluation period the ESPs in most of the wells were operating under stable conditions with minor shutdowns, no significant increases in the motor current, motor temperature, and vibration were observed.

A dual purpose design is presented in this paper to face high gas presence and sand production conditions in petroleum wells with an Electric Submersible Pump (ESP) system installed. The results of this design's application in severely problematic wells, due to high gas and sand production, will confirm the importance of conditioning the fluid before it gets to the pump intake. This engineered design consists of different stages from the isolation of the pump intake until the tubing bodies in charge of gas and sand handling. Engineering concepts were applied in the construction of this solution such as gas re-solubilization, changes of pressure and velocity, agitation, and vortex effect to finally present a design that is capable of breaking gas slugs into smaller gas bubbles that can be produced by the ESP system without impacting its performance, and at the same time separating fine solid particles (<250 microns) using centrifugal forces. Case studies from wells located in the Permian basin will better explain the positive impact of selecting a proper downhole conditioning system to improve the ESP systems efficiency. A drastic improvement on the sensor parameters will also illustrate the effect of handling the gas and sand before the pump intake, which also leads to one of the most important consequences: A decrease in the number of shutdowns, which in turn decreases non-productive time, resulting in positive impact of fluid production. Additionally, the flexibility of this design is significant, since it allows it to be installed in a wide range of fluid production, gas-liquid ratio, tubing and casing sizes. The novelty of this new design is the addition of the surge valve below the packer, which accomplishes multiple purposes: to avoid surging in the well, to allow testing the packer to assure it is properly set, and finally, allow chemical injection below the packer.

To deal with gas and sand problems in their conversion and rod pump wells an operator company in south Texas started introducing a combined technology of two-stages filtration with a modified poor boy gas separator obtaining excellent results. This paper explains the technology used and shares the information used to design the tools and the results achieved in the first wells completed. The screening process to choose the best technology started trying different technologies for gas and sand control below the rod pump. Different technologies were revised sharing data like sand particle size, pump design, fluid production expected and wellbore configuration to get the best design from different companies. The technical and economic evaluation determined the combined system with two-stages filtration and gas separation was the best technology among all the installations. After the results, same technology was applied to other wells changing the configuration based on the well conditions but maintaining the same principle of operation. After the installation of this technology in each well, it was clear that there was a substantial increase in production among the wells that was caused for the improvement in the pump cards after the installation. The downhole equipment has been able to handle better gas production and no sand problems have been reported so far. The success of this technology has extended the operational capabilities of the pumps allowing the engineers to operate their wells better. Pump cards before and after the installations are summarized in the presentation to show evidence of the good results obtained. After the wells are converted from ESP to rod pump or when the gas represents an issue in the rod pumped wells, the production engineers are limited in the drawdown and the production they can get out of the wells. We are presenting an alternative for the operators to optimize the production's BHA and overcomsand and gas problems that limit the ability to increase the income of the oil fields.

Failures due to solid particles flowing with the production fluid is one of the main causes of interventions in wells with beam pumping systems. When this problem is accompanied with chemical deposition like scale, leads to a very common intervention during well operation. This paper proposes an analytical methodology that consists of evaluation of the particle size distribution, viability for the use of sand screens and centrifugal separation systems for sand control management in wells with short run time. These systems have proven effective for failure wells that requires a sand control management system when if not addressed increase the lifting costs leading many projects to be infeasible from an economic standpoint. All the technical considerations are explained focusing on the information required and the parameters analyzed to recommend the most accurate design for sand control; selected approaches and models that have been developed to improve the run time due to sand issues are shown in this paper. A case study is showed in a well with average run time of 27 days indicating that identification of particle size distribution was a key factor to provide the right solution for sand control management. These novel applications help operators to reduced OPEX (operating expense), by minimizing well Interventions, decreasing failures in the pump; stabilizing the production and reducing the unforeseen interruption.