An Innovative Approach in Sand Onset Prediction at Different Water Cuts and Estimating Sand Production for Future Field Life

Abstract

Critical drawdown pressure for sand onset and its accuracy with change in water cut is a continuous area of study. The numerous parameters like grain cementation, viscosity of fluids, actual physics of sand production with fluids leads to a lot of uncertainty. In practical terms, it has been observed that these mechanisms lead to reduction in Uniaxial Compressive Strength of rocks. The objective of this paper is to present a novel method that not only helps on understanding the effect of water production on sand failure but to further predict the volumetric expected sand production up until a certain tolerable error. A sand prone field within Malaysian region was identified and core tests were done to evaluate UCS and other rock strength parameters at different saturation of water to simulate the effect of water on rock strength. CDP evaluations were done and the values were calibrated with actual field data to have an accurate understanding of CDP values at different water cuts. Lastly, with the findings from field production data, limit was pushed further to develop a novel method to predict the volumetric sand production. The proposed novel method has helped not only in understanding the effect of water production on sand failure but also on the amount of sand to be produced under different drawdown pressures with a reasonable accuracy. These results proved very useful in implementing Company's Holistic Sand Management strategy. The integration of this method with water cut predictions from reservoir simulation models helped the team to quantify the continue increasing sand production due to water cut increase. Company is replicating similar workflow in other sand prone fields for an effective sand management. The approach is very novel as the theoretical modelling work has been effectively calibrated using real field data. This method has provided a high degree of confidence in estimating the amount of sand to be produced under different production conditions. Authors consider this as a breakthrough in field of holistic sand management and very useful workflow for all other operators to emulate.