Numerical Modeling of the Amount and Rate of Sand Produced in Oil Wells

Abstract

Nowdays, sand production is one of the most important challenges in the oil and gas industries, making numerous issues. To prevent these problems, it is necessary to use mathematical models to estimate the sand production onset and the amount of sand produced during production. There are generally four methods for predicting sand production: experimental methods that use field observations and well data, laboratory simulations, numerical methods, and analytical methods. In this research, a novel numerical method is proposed to estimate the amount of sand production. First, it is necessary to estimate the onset of sand production using failure criteria and after that, the amount of sand production is estimated. First, to use numerical methods, they must be calibrated by using field data. In this paper, the proposed numerical model is calibrated by using the field observations and well data of a North Sea reservoir. It is used to predict the amount of produced sand that the average relative error of the proposed method was about 6.9%. Also, in this model, computable parameters are used to calculate the amount of sand production, which reduces the error of this method. It also shows that this is a practical model. Therefore, the proposed model is reliable, and it can be used to estimate the amount of sand production for subsequent years. The proposed model is developed based on incompressible and slightly compressible fluids; this paper also considers the relationship between porosity and permeability at steady-state conditions. Ultimately, sensitivity analysis on sand production is performed, and the effects of four permeability parameters: uniaxial compressive strength, maximum horizontal stress, and wellbore pressure on sand production are checked.

Keywords

• sand production
• numerical modeling
• oil and gas wells
• failure criteria