Field Case Study on Formation Fines Control With Nanoparticles in Offshore Wells

Abstract

Abstract Various technologies have been developed in the industry to find efficient and cost-effective ways to control fines migration in producing wells. Migrating fines are often the source of formation near-wellbore due to their ability to choke a well's productivity by collecting in pore throats near the wellbore where flow velocity is high due to radial flow regime into the wellbore. It is important to minimize or prevent formation damage in the radial flow region around the wellbore to allow the well to operate at desired rate and bottomhole pressure. The typical recourse for formation damage resulting from migrating fines is expensive remedial stimulation treatments involving mud acid or hydraulic fracturing, which increases the well's operating cost. This paper provides a field case study of using nanoparticles to treat proppant used on an offshore frac pack. The nanoparticles have significantly high surface forces, including van der Waals forces and electrostatic forces, to attach themselves to the surface of commonly used proppant. The nanoparticles that adhere to the proppant will adsorb migrating formation fines onto the proppant surface as the fines flow into the fracture. This will maintain well productivity much longer than untreated proppant in the fracture by preventing the fines from accumulating in the near-wellbore area. After the nanoparticle-coated proppant is saturated with formation fines, it can easily be cleaned up with conventional fluids and retreated with nanoparticles for continued capturing of formation fines. The case history studies an offshore well that historically suffered systematic production loss due to migrating fines. The well was sidetracked and the new completion used nanoparticle treated proppant in the frac pack completion. After the treatment, the well's productivity was recovered and has maintained the recovered productivity for ten months without a formation fines issue.