Slotted Completion for Sand Management: A Novel Screenless Completion Technique

摘要

Three novel concepts have been identified which realise thebenefits of screenless completions. The most developed of thetechniques, the slotted completion for sand management, isdescribed along with the underlying mechanism by which it isable to defer or avoid sand production.The investigation of this novel completion is based on alaboratory testing programme centred around polyaxialcubical samples of Castlegate sandstone, subjected to a 3-dstress regime. The design of these block tests was based, inpart, on numerical analyses, using in-house modellingcapabilities for simulating Castlegate sandstone. The analysisassisted in defining the borehole and slot dimensions. The pre-testingnumerical analyses are presented, along with thelaboratory block test results. Both the analysis and test resultsprovide 'proof of concept' for the mechanisms underlying thisnovel completion technique.