The Impact of Sand Control Techniques on the Efficiency of Horizontal Wells

Abstract

The production of formation sand into a well is one of the oldest problems plaguing the oil and gas industry. This is because of its adverse effects on the well productivity and equipment. In order to ensure safe operation of facilities, reduce formation damage and enhance productivity, operators spend millions of dollars on sand control techniques. Some of the most common sand exclusion techniques used for horizontal completions in Niger Delta include: the open-hole gravel pack (OHGP), stand-alone screens (SAS) and expandable sand screen (ESS). This work involves a comparative analysis of the different horizontal sand exclusion techniques. In this work, evaluating the impact of sand control techniques on the production performance in horizontal wells is evaluated. Some performance indicator tools such as the well inflow quality indicator (WIQI), performance efficiency, completion efficiency, quantity of sand produced and the production decline rate after installation of the sand control technique was used to compare the flow performance of wells equipped with these sand control techniques. The analysis involves the use of analytical models and software using the principle of nodal analysis. For the Nodal analysis, the effect of skin, reservoir pressure, gravel pack length and gravel pack permeability was investigated on the performance of the gravel pack and stand-alone screen completions techniques only. The results showed that, the expandable sand screen proved to be a better sand exclusion technique in terms of performance followed by stand-alone screens and then the open-hole gravel pack.