An Alternative Wellbore Stabilisation and Sand Control Technology - Application of Expandable Sand Control System in multi-lateral Wells
Search citation statements
Paper Sections
Citation Types
Year Published
Publication Types
Relationship
Authors
Journals
Cited by 3 publications
References 0 publications
The advent of Expandable Sand Screens (ESS) technology heralded a new era in mechanical downhole sand control by specifically addressing perceived limitations of standalone screens (SAS) and complexities of gravel packs. To date, ESS has been installed in over 400 wells worldwide under a variety of operating conditions, with the majority in single-zone environments. This paper describes designs aspects and applications engineering behind historical ESS applications, and discloses findings from a recent survey of these installations to derive key performance and reliability indices. A discussion of how these findings have been used to better understand and refine operations envelope for ESS and improve robustness of applications engineering to yield greater system reliability is also included. The productivity benefits of ESS technology, has been the subject of several authorative papers, with growing body of anecdotal evidence now in the public domain quantifying productivity gains achieved compared with other wells employing variety of other sand control techniques, particularly in open-hole environments. The drive for maximum well productivity compels many operators to consider openhole completion strategies. However, this has often not been possible through inability to achieve effective zonal isolation. Though ESS has been interfaced successfully with available annular barrier technologies to satisfy this goal in cased hole, technical limitations have constrained use in open hole. This paper documents therefore an 18-month expandable technology research and development effort that has culminated in the introduction of a wholly new multi-zone Expandable Reservoir Completion (ERC) architecture, where selective isolation or production provides advantage. This next generation ERC system combines slotted and solid expandable technology to deliver a reservoir completion with a combination of openhole production performance and casedhole functionality. Early results from initial ERC installations are showcased to illustrate system potential. Introduction In recent years there had been few radical developments in the sand control arena. When the first ESS was launched in 1999 it was not only a radical departure from convention, it introduced the concept of direct screen contact as a means of overcoming the limitations of SAS and complexities surrounding open hole gravel packs (OHGP). The design premise was that a compliantly expanded filter that could eliminate the screen-to-wellbore annulus would promote rapid formation stabilization and minimize the movement of sand particles around the screen under production conditions, resulting in reduced erosion and screen plugging. In so doing, and with the large directly exposed filter surface minimising pressure drop in the screen, both productivity and reliability would also be boosted1. The role of the reduction in the annular gap in increasing completion reliability has been discussed in Helland et al2 ESS was initially aimed specifically at openhole applications, with features such as large exposed filter area and variable ESS borehole contact (becoming known as compliant expansion) included to provide gravel pack functionality with the operational simplicity of a stand-alone screen. However, the applications envelope has over time extended to encompass cased-hole environments as a replacement for cased hole gravel packs (CHGP) and cased hole frac-packs (CHFP).
The advent of Expandable Sand Screens (ESS) technology heralded a new era in mechanical downhole sand control by specifically addressing perceived limitations of standalone screens (SAS) and complexities of gravel packs. To date, ESS has been installed in over 400 wells worldwide under a variety of operating conditions, with the majority in single-zone environments. This paper describes designs aspects and applications engineering behind historical ESS applications, and discloses findings from a recent survey of these installations to derive key performance and reliability indices. A discussion of how these findings have been used to better understand and refine operations envelope for ESS and improve robustness of applications engineering to yield greater system reliability is also included. The productivity benefits of ESS technology, has been the subject of several authorative papers, with growing body of anecdotal evidence now in the public domain quantifying productivity gains achieved compared with other wells employing variety of other sand control techniques, particularly in open-hole environments. The drive for maximum well productivity compels many operators to consider openhole completion strategies. However, this has often not been possible through inability to achieve effective zonal isolation. Though ESS has been interfaced successfully with available annular barrier technologies to satisfy this goal in cased hole, technical limitations have constrained use in open hole. This paper documents therefore an 18-month expandable technology research and development effort that has culminated in the introduction of a wholly new multi-zone Expandable Reservoir Completion (ERC) architecture, where selective isolation or production provides advantage. This next generation ERC system combines slotted and solid expandable technology to deliver a reservoir completion with a combination of openhole production performance and casedhole functionality. Early results from initial ERC installations are showcased to illustrate system potential. Introduction In recent years there had been few radical developments in the sand control arena. When the first ESS was launched in 1999 it was not only a radical departure from convention, it introduced the concept of direct screen contact as a means of overcoming the limitations of SAS and complexities surrounding open hole gravel packs (OHGP). The design premise was that a compliantly expanded filter that could eliminate the screen-to-wellbore annulus would promote rapid formation stabilization and minimize the movement of sand particles around the screen under production conditions, resulting in reduced erosion and screen plugging. In so doing, and with the large directly exposed filter surface minimising pressure drop in the screen, both productivity and reliability would also be boosted1. The role of the reduction in the annular gap in increasing completion reliability has been discussed in Helland et al2 ESS was initially aimed specifically at openhole applications, with features such as large exposed filter area and variable ESS borehole contact (becoming known as compliant expansion) included to provide gravel pack functionality with the operational simplicity of a stand-alone screen. However, the applications envelope has over time extended to encompass cased-hole environments as a replacement for cased hole gravel packs (CHGP) and cased hole frac-packs (CHFP).
The Use of Slotted Expandable Liners in Multizone Openhole Frac-Packs: A New Completion Concept
Sand production is becoming increasingly problematic due to the exploitation of poorer quality reservoirs and depletion of existing reservoirs. Cased hole frac-packs (CHFP) combine reliable sand control with potential for high productivity, and have become the completion of choice in many provinces. However, CHFP completions manifest in limited flow entry area into the well. This may cause two problems; a loss of productivity and potential screen erosion. In CHFP designs it is common to perforate the casing with high shot density big hole charges, but due to shot orientation and phasing, only a relatively few perforations connect with the fracture. Entire well production therefore originates from 4spf or less. Detailed modeling shows that this will not cause productivity impairment if the proppant pack is undamaged. Predicted skins for undamaged CHFP should be slightly negative, but field observations in one particular region show typical skins of 2 to 5, but with skins above 10 also reported. This tends to suggest that proppant permeability is being reduced in-situ. By contrast, productivity of open hole frac-packs (OHFP) is significantly less impacted by proppant damage and they also greatly reduce screen erosion risk. The productivity enhancement is revealed through detailed inflow modeling and laboratory experiments. However, it is difficult to engineer multi-zone OHFP completions, and wellbore stability issues complicate implementation. These limitations can be resolved by setting field-proven expandable completion liner (ECL) in the openhole section, prior to running the inner sand screen completion and frac-pack tools. Experiments on large scale samples show that ECL stabilizes the borehole. ECL slot geometry also results in 3-5 fold increase in fracture connection area compared to CHFP. ECL technology can also be combined with a number of different zonal isolation packer technologies, such as expandable, mechanical, swell and combo packer designs, to segment zones. This gives ECL frac-packs (EFP) the functionality of a multi-zone CHFP, but mitigates productivity impairment through proppant plugging and also screen erosion risk. The EFP completion concept also removes a casing string and eliminates perforating, and so also reduces HSE risks. It also has the potential to accommodate larger screen sizes, slim well designs and to reach deeper targets. The EFP completion concept also relies on integration of existing technologies, while offering the potential for a step change in well performance.
Expandable Sand Screens Selection, Performance, and Reliability: A Review of the First 340 Installations
Expandable sand screens (ESS®.) are a relatively new sand control system, which combines many of the properties of gravel packs with the ease of installation of a stand-alone screen.Although they have been used in a wide variety of applications, they are not considered a panacea and have an operational envelope, which is becoming clearer with time. Weatherford's ESS system currently (June 2005) has 340 installations and over 700 years of combined production.A recent survey of the installations was analyzed in terms of performance and reliability. The productivity performance of the ESS has been shown to be very good, with an average skin of 0.3 being achieved in recent openhole applications.ESS completions generally perform better than the baseline models.Where field comparisons were possible, they also performed better than alternative sand control completions. Over the 340 ESS wells, ESS has a reliability comparable with other sand control systems, with initial failures less than 5% and a production failure rate of 0.021 failures/well.year.This gives a projected survival rate at 20 years of greater than 90%.This rate is expected to get better with improving operations, designs, systems and application selection. Introduction When the first ESS was launched in 1999 it was a radical departure from convention, it introduced the concept of direct screen contact with the formation as a means of increasing productivity, sand control and reliability. ESS was designed and aimed specifically at openhole applications, despite the subsequent use of it in cased-hole applications. Features such as large exposed filter area and variable ESS borehole contact (becoming known as compliant expansion) were included to provide gravel pack functionality with the operational simplicity of a stand-alone screen.ESS has been used to replace openhole gravel packs (OHGP), cased hole gravel packs (CHGP), cased hole frac and packs (CHFP) and standalone screens (SAS). The design premise was that a compliantly expanded filter that could eliminate as much of the annular gap as was practicable would also promote rapid formation stabilization and minimize the movement of sand particles around the screen during initial transient sand production period. The large directly exposed filter surface was designed to minimize the pressure drops in the screen and sand pack composite caused by mud particles and formation fines. Both features were aimed at improving productivity and reliability of the sand-face completion. The role of the reduction in the annular gap in increasing completion reliability has been discussed in Helland et al[2]. With 340 ESS installations and 65 km now installed, the statistics are becoming significant and it is now possible with confidence to determine whether ESS does indeed offer the improvements claimed by the designers and to formulate selection criteria for their use. This paper presents data on performance of ESS completions together with data on long-term reliability and failure rates.The ESS application selection process is used to show how failure rates can be reduced and long-term reliability improved. ESS Performance There have been a large number of case studies published which have looked at ESS performance, in a wide variety of well types, vertical, horizontal, gas, gas-condensate, water and oil wells.The current maximum fluid production rate is 25,000 bpd, the maximum gas rate is 290 MMscf/d, and the maximum water injection rate is 40,000 bwpd.Some specific published examples are given below. Weekse et aldocumented the installation and performance of three long horizontal gas wells in the Brigantine field, in the Southern North Sea.The wells had up to 40% improved production over expectation.They were completed 32 days ahead of schedule with a saving of $13.5M.These wells have been producing for over 4 ½ years. The performance of the ESS completed wells in the gas condensate Scoter Field was also very good with no evidence of mechanical skin or formation damage[4]. These wells have been producing for over two years.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
Contact Info
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Product
Resources
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.
