Gravel Pack

A sand-control method used to prevent production of formation sand. In gravel pack

operations, a steel screen is placed in the wellbore and the surrounding annulus packed with
prepared gravel of a specific size designed to prevent the passage of formation sand. The
primary objective is to stabilize the formation while causing minimal impairment to well
productivity. asing gravel pack completion procedure includes drilling through the oil reservoir to
design depth, running production casing to the bottom of the oil reservoir, cementing, and then
perforating the oil reservoir. During perforating, a high perforation density (30–40 perforations/m)
and a large perforation diameter (20–25.4 mm) are required in order to increase flow area. Sometimes
the reservoir sand outside the casing may be washed out in order to pack gravel into the location of
the oil reservoir outside the perforations to avoid mixing of gravel with formation sand and increasing
flow resistance. There are two types of packing fluid. One is hydroxyethyl cellulose or polymer.
High-density packing is adopted with a gravel-carrying volume ratio up to 96% (12 lb/gal), that is,
1 m3 fluid should pack 0.96 m3 gravel. The other is low-viscosity salt water with a gravel-carrying
volume ratio of 8–15% (1–2 lb/gal), which can avoid the possible formation damage induced by the
high-viscosity, gravel-carrying fluid. Under open hole gravel pack completion, the gravel bed at the
bottom of the borehole acts as a sand filter—it only allows fluid to pass through, not formation sand.
Under the casing gravel pack completion condition, the wire-wrapped screen matching the grain size
of sand produced and the gravel size matching the reservoir rock grain composition should be
selected. The selection principle is that not only can reservoir sand be retained, but also the gravel
pack bed has a higher permeable property. Therefore, the sizes of wire-wrapped screen and gravel,
quality of gravel, performance of packing fluid, packing with gravel ratio (gravel-fluid volume ratio
of 0.8–1:1), and operational quality are important successful factors of sand control by gravel pack
completion.

(Source : https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/gravel-pack )