SPE-196333-MS

Safeguarding Well Integrity through Vigilant Sand Production Monitoring

and Surveillance in Digital Field

Ezza Shazana Mohd Shabarudin, Petronas Carigali SDN BHD; Mohamad Mustaqim Mokhlis, Schlumberger

Copyright 2019, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE/IATMI Asia Pacific Oil & Gas Conference and Exhibition held in Bali, Indonesia, 29-31 October 2019.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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Abstract
Prevention is better than cure is the right phrase to express how important sand production monitoring and
surveillance to protect well integrity which consequently help securing environment, people, asset and also
reputation without causing unnecessary restrictions to the production performance. This paper showcases
the benefits gained from utilizing an automated Digital Integrated Operations System, or "IO" to enhance
the existing Sand Monitoring and Management (SMM) workflow.
Sand production will impose significant impact and key failure are mostly related to erosion and sand
accumulation. Reactive management approach can be implemented in a faster manner should we have
good surveillance. The IO was designed to provide critical information on the historical and current status
and operating conditions of wells, production and injection equipment, as well as daily production and
injection volumes based on data fed from the thousands of transmitters installed at the plant. The system is
used for different applications related to production surveillance and optimization, and also includes sand
management as a core module. For this purpose, it utilizes the SMM workflow by enabling visual monitoring
of well sand count data and compliance to well sampling plan in the IO platform, and by performing daily
computation of erosional rates together with remaining wall thickness on surface flowlines - achieved by
combining live well parameters with latest sand count data, latest well test and erosion rate.
Upon stringent monitoring, two (2) wells were identified by IO to be under high risk and quick action
was taken to manage the risk. From IO, number of times that each well had been categorized under severity
were then be validated by checking in the input data. From well monitoring and surveillance, flowing tubing
head pressure (FTHP) were seen lower than trending and bean size had been fully opened. Knowing that
the well is prone to be producing high amount of sand and expose to downhole integrity issue, the sand
production must be controlled before it reaches to the surface.
The immediate action was to choke down the well, monitor the FTHP, evaluate well test performance
trending and most importantly increase the frequency of sand count. After doing so, the team observed that
erosion rate has been reduced below the limit and sand count was also reduced. Simple action can be taken
if we know what is the root cause in a timely manner. All this will be possible through IO. Visualization
had been transparent, communication was enhanced, and collaboration boosted towards safe operation.
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Introduction
Field A is the biggest integrated oil and gas development in Malaysia. It is located approximately 170km
off the East Coast of Terengganu and operated by two (2) operators under one Production Sharing Contract
(PSC). Field A is known as a main contributor of oil and gas in the Peninsular of Malaysia.

Conventional Sand Management

The conventional sand management practices in field A was highly dependant on the efforts from the
surveillance engineers to gather important well data and perform erosion and depositional risk analysis.
Data from various sources such as well test, PVT fluid properties, sand production info and pipe data needs
to be gathered and searched from the corporate database system, and sometimes some information are only
available in excel reports. A surveillance engineer would spend a massive amount of time to complete the
data gathering process. After all the data information have been gathered, the surveillance engineer will
require some time to calculate the erosion and depositon, before the person is able to perform the risk analysis
on the well. As sand sampling compliance is part of the KPI, it's almost impossible for the surveillance
team in field A to achieve full compliance due to the high number of strings in this field. The consequence
of this is there was delay in alerting the well with high potential of having severe erosion risk, which as
well causes delay of flowline inspection before unnecessary pipe leaking occurred at site. Therefore, field
A are venturing into a systematic integrated sand management approach to increase the effectiveness of
sand management practice in the field.

Digital Field Integrated Operation (IO)

Digital Field IO is a web-based transparent operation monitoring and optimizer which enable real time
surveillance, quick decision making and offers proactive and predictive approach to solve incoming issues
through detailed workflow and logic. The goal of IO is to maximize revenue, minimized cost and maximized
profit while at the same time ensuring the working environment is in safe condition, reliable and efficient.
SMM workflow is an approach whereby the data from subsurface and surface are integrated to provide
overall insight of sand production status of the field and respective wells. The information displayed in the
web-based dashboard is accessible to engineers for day-to-day monitoring whether they are in office or at
the field site.

IO Sand Management Workflow

The overall sand management approach in Digital Field IO in Field A is demonstrated in Figure 1.
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Figure 1—IO Sand Management Workflow

Automated Extraction – The sand management workflow requires various information of data
requirement to generate result, including fluid properties, pipe data, sand particle size distribution and well
head parameters. This information is stored in different database and varying sources therefore when the
data gathering work is done manually it induces a lengthy process cycle time to have every data in place
before capturing the result. This challenge is catered by automated data extraction from every sources into
a single repository database.
Automated Technical Analysis – Technical analysis through sand management includes well
performance analysis, sand erosion rate and deposition risk estimation are calculated on timely manner
within the automation process. The analysis is performed by field and platform level, to the analysis for
all strings in field A.
Sand Management Visualization – The information gathered from data extraction and the results from
technical analysis are visualized in an interactive dashboard for ease of monitoring for engineers and
offshore personnel. Information likes of sand production volume, sand severity, sand compliance status and
others are illustrated in tables, bar charts and 3×3 matrix form to ensure the information are clear and easy
to understand by everyone.
Throughout this systematic process, any critical warning on sand risk is detected early and the engineers
are able to provide a well-informed decision on the way forward.

Key Functionalities
The IO SMM workflow provides useful functionalities to facilitate the asset in overcoming the challenges
with regards to sand erosion and deposition risk. The key functionalities available are:
1. Sand erosion and deposition risk determination

◦ Erosion rate and critical depositional velocity calculation

▪ The sand erosion is calculated using an in house software (software S). Well information
which essential for tool to calculate erosion rate are the well test, sand data, fluid properties
and pipe info. Apart from erosion rate, software S is also able to produce the result of fluid
phase velocities and critical depositional velocity to analyse the deposition risk associated
to the well pipeline.
◦ Sand severity matrix
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▪ Each well's risk is categorized by its severity level based on erosion rate output from software
S vs the well sand count. Generally, for field A which is known for producing high amount
of sand, the well sand count sample higher than 100pptb and erosion rate higher than 0.5mm/
year is considered as high risk. This is presented on a severity matrix which categorize the
risk by Mild, Moderate and Severe based on the defined Low, Medium and High limit for
each sand count and erosion rate parameter.
◦ Sand trending

▪ Trending over a specific period can be established for any well/string so that a more
representative and accurate analysis can be done and not only based one high-risk event or
snapshot data.
◦ Well ranking

▪ Similar to sand trending, well/string can be ranked according to risk severity for production
optimization purposes.
◦ Sand sampling frequency and compliance status

▪
Sand sampling compliance status tracking helps the operation team to monitor and manage
the sand sampling schedule. The well sand sampling frequency are assigned according to
each severity category.
The sand sampling frequency will change when the condition of the well changes, whether
it's getting improved or worsen by the amout of sand count sample collected and calculated
erosion rate by the workflow.
2. Updated sand erosion and deposition risk determination

◦ Calibration of erosion rate calculation with ultrasonic/radiographic test (UT/RT) data

◦ Pipeline thickness estimation

▪ The pipeline thickness estimation gives an idea to the operation team about the estimated
current pipe thickness after substraction of eroded metal thickness (calculated using erosion
rate and total string uptime) from actual pipe thickness. The workflow sends out alarm to
operation engineers when the estimated pipeline thickness has lowered than the minimum
allowable wall thickness.
◦ Guided sand monitoring and inspection program

▪can also be done to the well alerted by the alarm, and the result is used by the pipeline team
to plan for pipe replacement for the well if necessary.
3. Pressure drawdown monitoring

◦ Drawdown pressure is an estimated calculation using a calibrated well model to provide an

understanding of drawdown trend so the engineers may able to react to the sand production
by chocking up the well to reduce the drawdown. The information would be more realistic if
the wells have permanent downhole gauge, as the drawdown can be monitored by viewing the
bottomhole pressure (Pwf) from the gauge.
4. Field sand production volume estimation

◦ The sand production volume is calculated at individual string based on the latest sand count
sample times with the total well uptime. On a production day, the sand production is sum up for
all active flowing wells to get the estimated figure of sand produced at field level. This gives an
overview for operation team on how much sand is being accumulated by the field on daily basis.
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Severity Category Sand Sampling Frequency

Severe 1 week

Moderate 3 weeks

Mild 5 weeks

Case Study in Field A

In operationalizing the IO SMM workflow, the operation team have come up with a schedule for sand
sampling which the priority was ranked according to the well sand severity. Wells with high sand count
and high erosion rate calculated by the workflow were put in higher priority as the new sampling should
be taken within a week.
Upon stringent monitoring, wells X and Y in Field A were observed fallen under severe category in the
severity matrix for two consecutive times. The sand count for both respective wells were more than 100
pptb and the erosion rate were larger than 0.01mm/year. Through real time well monitoring, the wells are
observed to flow with flowing tubing head pressure (FTHP) lower than trending meanwhile the bean size
had been fully opened. This scenario has alerted the operation team and imposed them to take a quick action
to address the warning.
Immediately, the strings were instructed to bean down and put under vigilant monitoring. Controlling the
amount of liquid and gas produced from the wells would lower down the sand production risk. Well test
was conducted to observe the changes of liquid rate and total gas output. Besides, frequent sand count was
taken with the frequency of once per week to validate the sand count result. This actions are taken to ensure
the erosion rate reduced in order to protect the tubing and choke integrity.
Post choke optimization, string X had shown declining trend of sand count (Figure 2). The sand severity
risk changed from severe to mild. The same behavior was observed for string Y (Figure 3) post frequent sand
count monitoring as the severity as well moved from severe to mild category in the sand severity matrix.

Figure 2—String X shows declining trend of sand count. From severe to mild matrix post choke optimization
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Figure 3—String Y shows declining trend of sand count. From severe to mild
matrix post frequent sand count monitoring to validate the sand count result

Apart of monitoring the sand count and erosion rate calculated by the Sand Management workflow, piping
inspection was conducted at both flowlines. The result shows no major findings except for spot corrosion
on the external and some thinning in the cap component of the piping.

Conclusions
Sand production monitoring and surveillance in Digital Field provides a proactive approach to prevent any
integrity issue upfront before any major issue such as LOPC or production deferment occurred. To ensure
people, environment, asset and reputation protected, a small routine step such as vigilant monitoring and
surveillance of sand can contribute for a safe operation, additional cost avoidance in the future, minimizing
value leakage for potential incidents, unleashing locked-in potential and improve pace and productivity.

References
1. F. Baghadi, A. Gupta, D. Kamat, A. B. Borhan, M. B. Jadid. 2016. Development of Sand Erosion
and Transport Software for Efficient Sand Management. Presented at the Offshore Technology
Conference Asia, Kuala Lumpur, 22-25 March. OTC-26488-MS
2. M. A. A. Tugimin, D. Kamat, F. Baghadi, A. Gupta. 2018. Improved Sand Management
Methodology Application in Mature Field. Presented at the SPE Asia Pacific Oil & Gas
Conference and Exhibition in Brisbane, 23-25 October. SPE-192085-MS