Acidizing Induced-Damage in Sandstone Injector Wells: Lab Testing and a Case History

Abstract

Abstract Throughout well lifetime, formation damage can occur during the activities of drilling, completion, injection, or well stimulation treatments. Typically, remedial treatments to restore the well performance involve injection of reactive fluids capable of removing such damage. Therefore, understanding damage mechanism and type is critical for fluid selection and effective treatment design. Without this knowledge, the conducted stimulation treatment could cause a more severe form of formation damage. This report discusses the improper use of mud acid at (9 wt% HCl/1 wt% HF) in restoring the injectivity of N-510. The subject well was stimulated with two acid stimulation treatments as an attempt to improve the poor results of a previous clean-out job, conducted to remove mud filter cake. These treatments were designed to remove the damage that has been limiting the well injectivity. However, it was found that these acidizing treatments created a new formation damage which resulted in severe decline in the well injectivity. Integration of chemical analysis techniques of return fluids and core-flood experiments was used to assess the effectiveness of all conducted treatments. This report demonstrates the techniques used to identify the source and type of formation damage mechanism that occurred during each treatment. Based on these studies, it was found that the poor results of clean-out job were due to precipitation of calcium sulfate. This precipitation was a result of the mixing between spent cleanout acid, having a high amount of calcium, and the high-content sulfate water. Most of this precipitation occurred in the well-bore vicinity during the last stages of the well flow-back. Calcium sulfate precipitation had a negative impact on the performance of the conducted acid stimulation treatments. In the presence of this precipitation, the two successive mud acid stimulation treatments created another form of damage, i.e. in-situ fluoride-based scale. Initially, the fresh injected mud acid dissolved most of the calcium sulfate scale and as a result it contained high amount of dissolved calcium ions. However, upon the spending of injected mud acid in the formation, calcium fluoride precipitated as a result of the increase of solution pH value. The interactions between different acid systems and the constituent of down-hole environment, resulting in the precipitation of calcium sulfate and calcium fluoride, are discussed. In addition, this report provides recommended modifications to future stimulation treatments, conducted under similar conditions so as to prevent the formation of these scales.