Geomechanical Sanding Prediction in Oil Fields by Wellbore Stability Charts

Abstract

Sand production is a universally encountered issue during the exploration of unconsolidated sandstone reservoirs particularly during production. The production of sand particles with the reservoir fluids depends on the stress around a wellbore and the properties of the reservoir rocks and fluids. Therefore, it is crucial to predict under what production conditions sanding will occur and when sand control is needed to come up with the optimal field development plan. This paper presents new geomechanical stability charts for Oman that have been generated to predict sand production in sandstone formations during the production process. The produced stability charts simplified the complicated task of geomechanical analysis, and they are ready for direct applications by petroleum engineers with no need to be specialized in rock mechanics. This was achieved by utilizing a three-dimensional model which was previously justified. The applied model utilized the linear poroelastic constitutive model for the stresses around a borehole in conjunction with Mogi-Coulomb law to predict the failure of sandstone formations. In this work, moreover, the optimum well trajectories for Omani oil fields are reported.