A set of graphical design criteria for slotted liners in steam assisted gravity drainage production wells

Wang, Chenxi; Pang, Yu; Mahmoudi, Mahdi; Haftani, Mohammad; Salimi, M.; Fattahpour, Vahidoddin; Nouri, Alireza

doi:10.1016/j.petrol.2019.106608

Cited by 11 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The SRT facility (Figure 4) consists of a fluid injection unit, SRT cell, DAQ unit, produced sand collector and back pressure/saturation unit. Further details about the SRT test can be found in previous research [15,32]. cell is a modified triaxial cell that accommodates the multi-slot coupon and large-scale sand-pack.…”

Section: Sand Retention Test (Srt) Set-upmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Slot Width and Density on Slotted Liner Performance in SAGD Operations

2020

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Sand production from a poorly consolidated reservoir could give rise to some severe problems during production. Holding the load bearing solids in place is the main goal of any sand control technique. The only sand control techniques that have found applications in steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) are some of the mechanical methods, including wire wrapped screens, slotted liners and more recently, punched screens. Slotted liner is one of the most effective mechanical sand control methods in the unconsolidated reservoir exploitation, which has proven to be the preferred sand control method in the SAGD operations. The main advantage of the slotted liners that makes them suitable for SAGD operations is their superior mechanical integrity for the completion of long horizontal wells. This study is an attempt to increase the existing understanding of the fines migration, sand production, and plugging tendency for slotted liners by using a novel large-scale scaled completion test (SCT) facility. A triaxial cell assembly was used to load sand-packs with specified and controlled grain size distribution, shape and mineralogy, on multi-slot sand control coupons. Different stress levels were applied parallel and perpendicular to different combinations of slot width and density in multi-slot coupons, while brine was injected from the top of the sand-pack towards the coupon. At each stress level, the mass of produced sand was measured, and the pressure drops along the sand-pack and coupon were recorded. Fines migration was also investigated by measuring fines/clay concentration along the sand-pack. The current study employed multi-slot coupons to investigate flow interactions among slots and its effect on the flow performance of liner under typically encountered stresses in SAGD wells. According to the experimental observations, increasing slot width generally reduces the possibility of pore plugging caused by fines migration. However, there is a limit for slot aperture beyond which the plugging is not reduced any further, and only a higher level of sanding occurs. Test measurements also indicated that besides the slot width, the slot density also influences the level of plugging and sand production and must be included in the design criteria.

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Section: Sand Retention Test (Srt) Set-upmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Slot Width and Density on Slotted Liner Performance in SAGD Operations

2020

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“…Thus, it was considered in the mitigation program and designing well completion for new wells (Khadivi and Vossoughi 2005). Slotted liner and Screener are two types of sand control devices, which restrict sand migration and settle them beyond the casing (Dong 2016; Shahsavari and Khamehchi 2018;Mahmud et al 2019;Wang et al 2019).…”

Section: Introducti̇onmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robust Sieve Analysis Using Sieve-by-Sieve Method

2020

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Distribution of size of sand grains is an important factor in characterization of unconsolidated reservoirs as well as designing sand control devices. In practice, sand grains are passed through a set of known mesh sizes by mechanical vibration and for a fixed period then the weight of sediments retained on each sieve are measured and converted into the percentage of the total sediment (PTS). This procedure is applied to all core samples and the resulted PTS data are used for characterizing grain size distribution using one of the sieve analysis procedures. The core-by-core method, for example, is one of the conventional methods that PTS data from each core sample are used individually to estimate mean, sorting and other dependent parameters to grain size distribution. In this method, applying a robust statistical method to integrate all PTS data and picking out the most probable size from all cores is a challenge. A new approach is introduced in this paper as sieve-by-sieve method, whereby the grain weight distribution data are classified based on mesh sizes (as bins) and the most probable size in each class is picked out among all cores directly and without any manipulation or averaging. In this paper, the performance of both methods are compared in a homogeneous media and a heterogeneous media. In a homogeneous media, both methods provide comparable results. However, in a heterogeneous media, the core-by-core provides too many distributions which sometimes are not conclusive but the sieve-by-sieve provides the profiles of minimum and maximum weight of retained grains, which facilitates picking out the most probable size among all cores.

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“…The maximum slot size in this criterion is 3.5 times D50, and the minimum slot size is two times D70. Other researchers conducted prepacked SRT experiments to determine the proper slot size [17][18][19]29,30].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, researchers believe prepacked SRT reasonably represents the SAGD wellbore condition [31][32][33][34][35]. Past experimental works recognized a few factors that should be incorporated in the slotted liner design criteria, including slot size, slot density, fluid velocity, fluid phase and PSD [18,19,30,36]. However, these factors were only partially incorporated in their experimental study.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An Improved Set of Design Criteria for Slotted Liners in Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage Operation

et al. 2020

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Slotted liners are widely used in steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) wells to control sand production and sustain wellbore productivity. The slotted liner can provide desirable performance when appropriately designed. A literature review indicates a limited number of studies that offer design criteria specifically for SAGD wells. Moreover, past criteria seem to neglect some key factors, which may lead to inadequate slot design. This paper proposes a set of graphical design criteria for slotted liners in SAGD production wells, using prepacked sand retention testing (SRT) data. The SRT is designed to incorporate several essential factors that are not present in the past design criteria, such as slot density, steam breakthrough, and particle size distribution (PSD). The proposed design criteria are presented graphically for normal and aggressive conditions, where the aggressive condition accounts for the potential occurrence of the steam breakthrough. It is found that the upper bound of the design window is substantially lower for the aggressive condition due to the higher sand production after the steam breakthrough. The design criteria also indicate that the slotted liner is suitable only for the formations with low fines content.

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A set of graphical design criteria for slotted liners in steam assisted gravity drainage production wells

Cited by 11 publications

References 16 publications

Effect of Slot Width and Density on Slotted Liner Performance in SAGD Operations

Effect of Slot Width and Density on Slotted Liner Performance in SAGD Operations

Robust Sieve Analysis Using Sieve-by-Sieve Method

An Improved Set of Design Criteria for Slotted Liners in Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage Operation

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