Abstract

Sand production is a major concern during petroleum exploitation from unconsolidated sandstone reservoirs. For efficient management, sanding predictive tools are necessary. While several models have been developed for sanding in oil reservoirs, gas and gas condensate reservoirs have received little attention because of the widespread belief that such reservoirs are not prone to sanding. This study utilized erosional failure mechanism concept to formulate a model for predicting the volume of sand produced from gas and gas condensate reservoirs. The model showed that sanding in weakly consolidated gas reservoirs is influenced by flow rate, fluid density and viscosity, density of sand, particle size and borehole radius.

Key words: Sand production, mathematical model, gas well, gas-condensate wells, cavity arch radius