Abstract
Sand production in oil/gas wells is an important topic wherein a proper engineering planning is required either to avoid, control or manage it. Ignoring this phenomenon may lead to an unfavorable impact on the overall economics of the field development with additional costs incurred to fix the issues at a later stage. Sand production is normally manifested due to sandstone rock failure. The failure sometimes only manifests at later stages of hydrocarbon production associated to depletion (stress evolution). Therefore, finding the root cause of the failure mechanism and routes to avoid it, is essential. In order to achieve this objective, a proper sand production prediction analysis is required using a geomechanical model. Selection of methodology and technology will be key for accuracy of the prediction, analysis and solution. We proposed a few techniques in this article, that can be adopted during the process to design the best engineering solutions to mitigate sand production. Both simple analytical models and advanced FEM numerical models have been discussed in the paper. The selection of methodology should be based on the overall sand production risk level even though FEM techniques is the best for solving the problem.
