Investigating unary, binary and ternary interactive effects on pressure drawdown for optimal sand production prediction

Abstract

Formation and oil well sand production is some of the greatest and oldest concerns for the Oil and Gas industry. The production of sand particles may vary from very small and limited amounts to far elevated levels which have the potential to block or plug the pore spaces near the perforated points to blocking production from surface facilities. Therefore, the timely and reliable investigation of conditions leading to the onset or quantification of sand production during production is imperative. The challenges of sand production are even more elevated while producing in reservoirs characterized by varying independent factors viscosity, flow rate, cementation, clay and fine sand content. Moreover, the combined interactive effects arising from varying these factors present more complexity during production since the combination could better depict actual field conditions. Investigating unary interactive effects discretely, in essence, may misrepresent actual field conditions since all factors do not act in isolation of others. This experimental research is based on the Design of Experiments (DOE) methodology to analyse factorial designs investigating the unary, binary and ternary interactive effects on sand production. An optimized regression model is developed to predict the pressure drawdown at sand production. The obtained results indicate that reservoirs characterized by varying (high and low) levels of viscosity, flow rate, cementation, clay and fine sand content have a resulting impact on sand production. Effects arising from unary interactions, i.e., flow rate and fine sand produce the highest significance levels compared to higher-order interactions, i.e., binary and ternary. The proposed regression model could be applied to predict the pressure drawdown as a precursor for sand production under viscous conditions.