Sand production in unconsolidated and weakly consolidated oil formations can enhance oil production, and there are significant reserves in the United States to which this technology might be applied. However, in addition to enhancing oil production, the increased sand production also increases sand disposal costs. This project will develop new design and completion strategies to optimize oil production increase through limited sand production, while assuring that increased sand disposal costs do not overtake the increased oil revenue. The strategy is to first permit limited sand production in order to establish an optimum production environment around the wellbore. Then, fracpack operations will be used to limit additional sand production. Phase I will include: (1) laboratory and field data review and analysis to identify the relative and combined effects of key physical processes; (2) the development of improved analytical and numerical models to quantify these relative and combined effects; and (3) the development and testing of a new design methodology and completion strategy involving limited sand production followed by fracpack operations.
Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The United States has significant heavy oil reserves in California, Alaska, and a few other areas that would benefit from cold production with sand. Many conventional oil and gas reservoirs in unconsolidated sand formations might also exploit deliberate sand influx under controlled conditions to sustain and improve well performance.
