SPE-196341-MS

Successful Application of Novel Modified HF Acid System for Sandstone

Matrix Acidizing in B Field

Chang Siong Ting, Zayful Kamarudzaman, M Ikhwan Aris, Nurul Ezween Hasbi, and Suzanna Juyanty M Jeffry,
Petronas Carigali Sdn Bhd; Siti Rohaida M Shafian, Petronas Research Sdn Bhd; Ashvin Chandrakant and M
Hafiidz Hassan, Petronas Carigali Sdn Bhd; Izam Ikhwan Kamaruddin and Khairul Idzwan Mohamad, Setegap
Ventures Petroleum Sdn Bhd

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
Fines migration is the common formation damage mechanism in the sandstone reservoir of field B which
has less established information on mineralogy distribution. There were many attempts to remediate the
formation damage using conventional mud acid fluid system but resulted in mixed success rates. This
situation warrant for the need for a modified acid recipe to avoid aggravation of fines migration problems
in this field post acid treatment.
This paper presents the pilot application of a modified HF acid recipe incorporating chelate. The paper
also depict the evaluation process that includes candidate selection, laboratory workflow and results,
treatment design, execution strategy and the post job analysis on well B-1S. In order to increase the
acid stimulation success rate, the team analyzed numerous post job reports of the nearby wells that were
previously treated with conventional mud acid system. The root causes of the previous job failures were
identified, such as prolonged soaking of acid in the formation due to unplanned platform shutdown and
limited platform deck space. Taking these factors into account, the modified HF acid system (with 1.0%
HF) was selected for execution in B Field. The pilot execution resulted in double the production compared
to the pre-treatment rate. The modified HF acid system has also improved the economics of the project due
to its lower cost since it is a one-step system and has lower additives requirement.

Introduction
The B field reservoirs are deposited in shoreface with some tidal influence in the shallower reservoirs. The
sands and interbedded shales are laterally continuous within fault blocks. The reservoir of interest (Reservoir
A) has a porosity in the range of 25-35% with permeability ranges from 500 − 1,000 mD. ZZ
A common problem in the reservoir A is formation damage due to fines migration. Several producing
wells from the A reservoir have experienced steep declines in production rates, prompting the execution of
acid stimulation jobs in order to reduce skin in the near wellbore and return the well production back to the
previous production rates. The wells in the reservoir A were commonly treated with conventional mud acid
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systems (HCl:HF). Mixed results were observed from the previous stimulation activities. From the analysis
of post job reports, it was found that the jobs that failed was due to delayed flowback of acid after the
pumping activity. The delay was caused by unplanned platform shutdown, compressor trip (resulting in no
gas lift supply for well flowback post stimulation) and adverse weather (workbarge has to pull out from the
platform due to safety concerns). It is well-known that mud acid should never be soaked inside the formation
for an extended period of time, due to the damaging effects of secondary and tertiary precipitations, acid
induced sludging and structural destabilization.
In field B, the offshore jacket platforms are very small with limited deck space. This limitation has
posed a logistical challenge for production enhancement activities that require large equipment to be
onboard, especially for pumping activities such as acid stimulation, sand consolidation and cement packer
jobs. Therefore, these type of jobs are usually executed with a workbarge. However, workbarge assisted
stimulation jobs have operational limitation, especially during unexpected adverse weather conditions.
Additionally, workbarge assisted jobs are expensive. Therefore, if the duration for the stimulation jobs can
be reduced, this will translate to significant cost savings to the operator.
There are limited core samples available for field B. The only core data reference is from an analog well
which has a similar depositional environment. As such, there are uncertainties in terms of the mineralogy
of the reservoir A robust and less damaging acid system is needed to stimulate the well to increase the
chance of success.
With these challenges in mind, the field B team collaborated with the research division of the company,
as well as the service company to explore a more robust acid system for stimulation jobs.

Background of Well B-1

Well B-1 was completed in Mar 2006 as one of the producer in reservoir A, located on a small jacket
platform in B field. Well B-1 was completed with dual string configuration. The short string B-1S is the
focus of this paper.

Production & Stimulation History of B-1S

B-1S is selected as one of the candidate for piloting the modified HF acid system due to mixed results from
previous stimulations attempts. The well B-1S had two stimulation treatments history. The first stimulation
was conducted using enzymes to remove the formation damage that were suspected to be caused by xantham
gum filter cakes. This treatment was not very successful with an increase in gross rate of around 20% only.
Several years after the first treatment, a mud acid (12:3) was introduced to B-1S. The mud acid treatment
was successful. The gross production improved 200% compared to the gross production when the well was
first produced. The oil rate also doubled post treatment, with watercut maintaining at around 50%.
However, the successful mud acid treatment lasted for less than 2 years before B-1S was found to be
experiencing formation damage due to fines migration again. In pursuit of a stimulation chemical which
is more robust and able to sustain higher production for a longer duration, the team decided to pilot the
modified HF acid system on well B-1S.

Sandstone Acidizing Candidate Selection, Design, Modeling & Execution

Candidate Selection
B-1S was identified with a sharp decline in production rates, with the gross production reduced in less than
25% of the original gross rate in a span of 5 months. All the well parameters unchanged, namely the Flowing
Tubing Head Pressure (FTHP), Flowline Pressure (FLP) choke size, gas lift rate & formation gas rate. The
watercut trend was increasing gradually from 5% to 40% from 2006 to end of 2008. B-1S was beaned
up from choke size 24/64 to 45/64, with almost no increase in production rates. The remaining reserves
SPE-196341-MS 3

from B-1S was still high, and the vertical lift performance was found to be good through nodal analysis.
The pressure of reservoir A remained unchanged through this period of time, proven with data from static
gradient pressure. This indicated there was significant formation damage in the near wellbore area of B-1S
due to increasing drawdown with no increase in production rates.
In order to design the correct treatment to remediate the formation damage from B-1S, an analysis on
the mechanism of formation damage is critical. There is no core sample from the B-1S. Therefore, the core
sample from an analog well was used as the reference. The mineralogy of the formation is identified using
X-Ray diffraction method (XRD). The results are highlighted as below:
The A reservoir consists of roughly 87% quartz, 4 % feldspar, 5% mixed illite and smectite, 2% kaolinite
and 2% chlorite. The presence of illite, kaolinite & chlorite indicates that the formation damage of B-1S
is due to fines migration.

Treatment Design for B-1S

Conventional mud acid system is known to be highly corrosive, coupled with risks of unwanted secondary
precipitation if the chemical was not flowed back immediately after the pumping operation. The complex
and multiple additives requirement in the acid system also posed logistics problem in small offshore
production platform.
With this, the criteria in selecting the most suitable stimulation chemical for well B-1S are as follows:
1. The acid system must be robust with very low or no risk of forming damaging secondary and tertiary
precipitates.
2. The treatment method and acid system should cater to a small footprint due to space limitation on
the small platform jacket.
3. The treatment should be cost effective.
In pursuit of overcoming these challenges, the modified HF acid system is evaluated for the application
of stimulation in well B-1S.

The Modified HF Acid System

The Modified HF Acid system is specially formulated to treat the typical sandstone formation found in
offshore oil fields in Malaysia. The new system consists of a weak mineral acid, an organic chelating
agent, a carboxylic acid chelating dispersant, and ammonium bifluoride (ABF) to generate HF. The mineral
acid reduces as the hydrogen ions released with that reaction with ABF to control the displacement of
hydrofluoric acid (HF) into formation, thus achieving the desired retardation effect. The slow reaction of
mineral acid combined with chelating agents as a buffer solution, limits the sharp rise of pH value within
the borehole area and consequently preventing the precipitation of byproducts detrimental to the reservoir.
Precipitation products such as CaSiF6 and silica gel can be controlled by the chelating agent. The chelating
agents inhibit the precipitation by creating negative charges in the silicon surface, thus causing repulsion
and avoiding silicon gel growth. Better results were achieved by soaking for several hours, proving the
merit of slow reaction in the stimulation systems.

Experimental Workflow
Extensive laboratory analysis was conducted to identify the suitable chelate-acids formulation as well
the chemical performance comparison between mud acid and chelate-acids system (where one of the
formulation tested was the modified HF acid system). Four reservoir cores from Field T (nearby to Field B)
were plugged and characterized prior to the treatment of the well. Figure 1 showed experimental workflow
and methodology.
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Figure 1—Production History Plot of Well B-1S

Figure 2—BaSO4 Scaling Index

Figure 3—CaCO3 Scaling Index

SPE-196341-MS 5

Figure 4—Experimental workflow and methodology for chemical selection:

In order to further confirm the damage mechanism, scaling tendency of B-1S was performed from water
analysis data. The scaling index of CaCO3 & BaSO4 was found to be very low, thus eliminating this form
of formation damage in B-1S.
The reservoir contained complex mineralogy distribution and it is important to choose the suitable
representative cores for the core flood test. Table 1 shows detail of the mineralogy of reservoir core T
measured through X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). The cores that contained high amount of iron based minerals
such as siderite were selected to be treated with chelate-acids system. The modified HF acid system need to
be tested in the condition when there is high iron content in the reservoir minerology, as well as uncertainty
in the mineralogy distribution. Table 2 show the reservoir cores assigned to the respective acid system for
the core flood test.

Table 1—XRD analysis of reference core data for B-1S

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Table 2—Comparison between conventional mud acid system and modified HF acid system

Table 3—X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) Data of Reservoir Core T

Table 4—Acid System for Reservoir Core T1, T2, T3 and T4

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Experimental Results and Discussions

Figure 5 (a) and 5 (b) show the pressure drop profiles of core T1 and T2 when injected with Chelate A
and Chelate B, respectively. Core T1 showed slight increase in pressure drop to maximum ~ 0.58 psi. This
indicate the acid reaction with core minerals. The pressure drop declined after 1.5 pore volumes of Chelate
A injection and stabilized at 0.52 psi throughout Chelate A and postflush injection. T2 core showed much
more rapid reaction when treated with Chelate B where increased in pressure drop to maximum ~ 5 psi and
gradually declined was observed throughout 50 pore volumes of Chelate B injection indicated the ability
of Chelate B in sequestrating the major ion minerals. The pressure drop was stabilized during postflush at
~ 0.82 psi which indicate the trend in permeability improvement. Calculated permeability before and after
chemicals injection showed that Chelate A had increased the permeability of core T1 by 17.0% and Chelate
B had increased the permeability of core T2 by 264%. Figures 6 (a) and 6 (b) showed the ions composition
of the effluent during chemical injection and post flush. Results of the ions composition showed Chelate B
gradually sequestrate the major iron minerals throughout the injection. On the other hand, Chelate A had
lost the sequestration power from the beginning of chemical injection and not able to further improve the
core permeability.

Figure 5—Pressure drop profiles during Chelate and post flush injection
a) T1 core treated with Chelate A
b) T2 core treated with Chelate B
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Figure 6—Ions concentration during Chelate and post flush injection

a) T1 core treated with Chelate A
b) T2 core treated with Chelate B

Figures 7 (a) and 7 (b) showed the pressure drop profiles of T3 and T4 cores when injected with Mud
Acid C and Mud Acid D respectively. T3 core treated with Mud Acid C showed aggressive reaction to
maximum pressure drop of ~200 psi. The injection of Mud Acid C was decreased to 0.5 ml/min at 22 PV
to complete the total pore volumes of chemical injection where pressure drop declined and stabilized at ~
1 psi. Calculated permeability before and after chemicals injection showed Mud Acid C had increased the
permeability of core T3 by 19.6%. Pressure drop of treated core T4 increased to maximum ~ 1.3 psi and
gradually declined to ~ 0.8 psi. The calculated permeability before and after chemicals injection showed that
Mud Acid D had increased the permeability of core T4 by 116.0%. Mud Acid D with lower HF concentration
showed better performance in terms of permeability improvement. On the other hand, Mud Acid C with
higher HF concentration can create potential damage to T reservoirs especially when the mineralogy is
unknown. The effluent ion comparison between Mud Acid C and D is not presented in this paper.

Figure 7—Pressure drop profiles during Mud Acid and post flush injection
a) T3 core treated with Mud Acid C
b) T4 core treated with Mud Acid D
SPE-196341-MS 9

From the laboratory results presented in this paper, chelate B, which is the modified HF acid system was
selected as the acid system for well B-1S.

Field Trial
The stimulation target area presents a common lithology composition throughout most of the offshore fields.
The reservoir pressures of treated well is 1000 psi while the bottom hole temperature is 120 deg F. The multi-
layer sandstone formation mainly composed of quartz as main build material (83-93%) and presence of
feldspar in minor quantities. The quantities of feldspar is 2-4% and halite is around 1%. Average clay content
is around 9%. Fines migration was determined as the main cause of production decline. The following
standard fluid were formulated for fines migration damage removal & control.

The first step of having a good acidizing treatment is to conduct a proper tubing pickling procedure. This
procedure is to remove as much as possible, various detrimental contaminants such as pipe dope, scales,
rust, iron oxides and acid dissolved iron from the wellbore prior to performing acidizing treatment. In this
regard, the pickling fluid should be efficient wellbore cleaning fluid formulated by the type and amount of
these contaminant. For well B-1S, 10 bbls of pickling fluid been spotted near wellbore area & soaked for 4
hours. The pickling fluid must be fully recovered at surface prior proceed with next step of injectivity test.
For matrix acidizing, injectivity test is a compulsory step to verify the formation's ability to receive fluid
and to ensure fluid distribution of treatment can fully cover all the interval of the treatment. Injectivity test
indicated 2 bpm injection rate. The result from the injectivity test is used to verify the post fluid distribution/
invasion using computer aided modeling as per figure below:

Figure 8—Numerical model of Modified HF system penetration, 44 inches to 110 inches of fluid invasion.
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Well B-1S bullheading treatment was executed as per the pumping schedule in Table 5 and Figure 9. The
treatment starts with pre-flush solvent, followed by spotting the modified HF acid 3 ft penetration into the
formation. This was followed by a post flush and 2 barrels of displacement fluid. The modified HF acid
was soaked in the formation for 4 hours. After 4 hours of soaking, 43 barrels of displacement fluid was
pumped into the well to recondition the 3 ft wellbore area with fines migration control agent (FCA) that
was included in the post flush formulation. The purpose of the post flush is to control fines migration after
treatment with modified HF acid system which will sustain the production gain post treatment. Once the
pumping was completed, the well was produced following the flowback procedure with 2 times of pumping
volume to ensure all the main treatment was flowed back to surface.

Table 5—Modified HF Acid Treatment Pumping Schedule

Figure 9—Pumping Schedule

SPE-196341-MS 11

Post Job Results

This operation was successfully carried out using the modified HF acid system (1.0% HF). Referring to
the field trial, the main treatment fluid was soaked for 4 hours within 3 ft of the targeted formation. After
soaking for 4 hours, the remaining stage of post flush & displacement been continued. Upon post flush,
the formation responded positively with decreasing pumping pressure on the surface, which indicated the
removal of formation damage in the wellbore area.
Once the treatment was completed with the displacement stage, the well was flowed back by injecting
nitrogen gas to assist in lifting the well fluids to the surface. The fluid returned with pH of 5 and gradually
increased back to pH 7. The flowback activity lasted for 2 days due to interruption on the platform as well
as insufficient nitrogen gas during the operation.
After the flowback activity was completed, the well B-1S was put on well test to determine the
effectiveness of the modified HF acid treatment. The results are shown as follows:

Figure 10—Well B-1S Production Profile post stimulation

From Figure 12, significant production gain was observed post treatment. The treatment was done on
July 2018. The modified HF acid system successfully restored the well production to more than double the
previous flow rates. Subsequent well tests confirmed the gain was sustained for more than 3 months. More
well test data were unable to be included in this paper due to issues with the well test facilities.
12 SPE-196341-MS

Figure 11—Nodal Analysis Results Pre & Post Stimulation

Figure 12—Numerical Model, Total Damage Skin from 37 to 17.

Nodal analysis was performed on post treatment. The results demonstrate 59% skin reduction post
stimulation (from 37 to 15), which supports the fact that the modified HF acid system has remediated the
formation damage and boosted the production to more than 200%.
The numerical modeling also shows the removal of formation damage with skin from 37 to 17,
representing 54% reduction of skin. This result supports the effectiveness of the modified HF acid system
in treating the formation damage in well B-1S.
SPE-196341-MS 13

Conclusion
The pilot application in Reservoir A of the novel modified HF acid system (with 1.0% HF) has demonstrated
its effectiveness to double the well performance while having a simpler system with minimum additives and
logistics. The application of this acid system is suitable for wells located in small jacket platform by utilizing
modular pumping system in the future. In terms of costs, the stimulation job was successfully carried out
via bullheading with 10-15% less cost compared to the conventional mud acid system, in addition to its less
logistics complexity. The novel modified HF acid system has proven to be the preferred stimulation fluid
for matrix acidizing in B Field.

Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the management of Petroliam National Berhad (PETRONAS), Petronas Carigali
Sdn. Bhd., PETRONAS Research Sdn. Bhd. and Setegap Ventures Petroleum Sdn. Bhd. for the permission
to publish this paper. Special thanks to PETRONAS Research Sdn. Bhd. for providing access to laboratory
equipment. In addition, the authors would like to thank Mr Wan Shah Rizal, Nur Anisah Shafie and M
Faizzudin Mat Piah for their assistance with core flooding test to the project team members for the full
commitment and support on this project.

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