Sand production prediction

Overview

Effective sand management begins with understanding the sanding mechanisms in your reservoir. GaffneyCline™ energy advisory’s field-specific predictive models help you identify the source, severity, and solutions for sand production in your reservoirs.  

Our modeling experts closely review all available data that contribute to sanding: 

• Well data, including existing and planned wells deviation and azimuth, completion diagrams, and planned well designs.
• Production data, including historical sanding events during fluid sampling, well testing, or production, with relevant well and formation pressure information.
• Reservoir data, including current and forecasted reservoir pressures, planned drawdowns, water cuts and timing, lithology columns, petrophysical evaluations of the target formation, rock mechanics tests, geomechanics, and reservoir management parameters.
• Supplementary data, including formation temperature, fluid types, produced water chemistry, particle size analysis, and target formation mineralogy. 

Using this data, coupled with a well-constrained geomechanical model of the reservoir, our experts build detailed sand prediction models. Depending on available data, we use analytical methods integrated into the Baker Hughes JewelSuite™ Geomechanics software or finite element methods in GMI SandCheck™ code. 

Integrating the sanding evaluation results from both methods will enhance your well completions and sand-control design decisions by providing:  

• Deterministic and probabilistic assessments of sand production over the well’s life cycle for open and cased-hole completions.
• Optimal well trajectories to minimize sand production.
• Optimized perforation orientations for cased-hole wells.
• The likely timing of sand production, the location of sand-producing zones, and the expected sand volumes under a given production scenario.
• Sensitivity analyses, additional data acquisition, and analysis recommendations to reduce uncertainties in the sanding model.
• Sand management design recommendations for surface equipment and passive and active sand control.
• Guidance on well and facility operation to minimize sand production impacts like erosional wear of equipment and sanding up of storage tanks and separators.   

Proper sand management is an ongoing process throughout your field’s producing life. Our experts will frequently review and update your sand predictions as your field’s production or process conditions change, ensuring minimal sand impacts and optimized well performance for the life of your asset.  

Contact your Baker Hughes representative to learn how GaffneyCline energy advisory’s sand production prediction modeling expertise can help you effectively manage sand for the life of your well.  

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Typical outputs of a sand production prediction study.