Abstract
Premature water breakthrough and sand production are problems that have plagued operators worldwide in the development of sandstone reservoirs. In many cases, these difficulties have limited the productivity of sandstone reservoirs to such an extent that operators have ignored recoverable reserves, considering them to be economically unfeasible. Today, however, horizontal technology can offer operators a viable sand control completion technique to address these issues; its capabilities of reducing formation damage by decreasing production flow velocities and drawdown pressure across the production zones while reducing the water content provides solutions to many basic sand control problems.
As demonstrated by the successes recently achieved using this technology, horizontal completions have dramatically changed operational outlook for both new wells and recompletions in a sandstone environment.
