THE FOURTH PHASE - NEW DOWNHOLE SAND DETECTIONTECHNOLOGY SHOWS EXCITING RESULTS AND PRESENTS LOW COST REMEDIAL OPPORTUNITIES.

摘要

Detecting sand production downhole has always been achallenge. Tools relying on simple acousticmeasurements were prone to error from road noise orproduction noise. False detections were common makingquantifying sand production downhole impossible forlegacy measurements.A new technology that counts sand grain impacts andimpact energy allows us to quantify sand production, ineffect measuring a fourth phase, solids. Early applicationof this technology shows promise and opens the doorsfor cost effective and targeted remedial action to betaken.This paper covers results from four wells. The mainobjective was to find water production zones and thesecondary objective to quantify sand production.Wireline production logs were recorded on all four wellsand a mini spinner array was used on three of them tobetter describe the fluid motions in these deviated wells.Water and gas holdup probes pinpointed water and gasentry to provide an intuitive and coherent interpretation.The sand impact detection tool was run on each well andthe fourth phase, sand, was clearly seen with excellentrepeatability, even at very low count rates.Before this work Distributed Acoustic Sensors (DAS)had been used in the field for sand detection with limitedsuccess. While DAS has been used in someenvironments with repeatable results, in this case thedata was inconsistent with the producing interval andcould not be used as a diagnostic tool with anyconfidence.