A New Gravel-Pack Approach Using Two Different Proppants in Long Horizontal Well Completions

摘要

The new scenario for offshore development in Brazil includes heavy oil fields in ultra deepwaters where 1000 m to 2000 m horizontal section wells are economical drives for field development.Such well geometry would assure effective reservoir drainage to maintain a reasonable productivity index of a heavy oil field.In such wells,mainly in low frac gradient scenarios,it is known that the dynamic pressures during gravel-packing operations can easily overcome formation frac pressure.In order to accomplish this task and avoid formation damage,a new approach has been proposed.During the beta wave stage,where a large pressure growth is observed,a lightweight proppant would be pumped.This article shows the computational simulations used to design this gravel-packing operation with two different proppants,in order to enable the completion of such wells.