PMRE 6005

Petroleum Production Engineering

Formation Damage
Reasons
 Plugging of the pore space by solids associated with
drilling/completion fluids or injected fluids
 Formation and deposition of inorganic scales due to
mixing of incompatible fluids
 Swelling or migration of clays
 Compaction associated with reservoir depletion
 Wettability reversal (due to asphaltene deposition)
 Modification to fluid saturation - water blocking.
 Emulsion formation due to reduced interfacial ten-
sion
 Skin Effect

Representing skin effect in terms of additional resistivity in the different part of

the reservoir
 Skin
The value of the Total Well skin (Stotal) measured during a production test
has many sources other than formation damage.

The total well skin is a composite parameter

Stotal = Sdamage + Sgeometry + Scompletion + Sproduction

Formation Damage Skin (Sdamage)

The effect of skin on well inflow pressure profiles

The natural flow producing system
 Formation Damage Skin (Sdamage)
 Hawkins Equation: This calculates the formation damage skin (Sdamage) re-
sulting from a cylinder of reduced permeability around the wellbore.

This equation shows that the formation damage skin increases as the per-
meability damage ratio (k/kd) increases or the radius of damage (rd) in-
creases.
Formation Damage Skin (Sdamage)

If the formation permeability reduced to 10% of its original value out to a ra-
dius of 30 cm, then what is the formation damage skin factor?
 Flow Efficiency
 The impact of formation damage skin is most conveniently expressed from
the production point of view, in terms of the Flow Efficiency (FE)
Flow Efficiency vs. Skin
 Exercise
 Assume that a well has a radius rw equal to 0.328ft and a
penetration of damage 3ft beyond the well. (i.e. rs
=3.328ft). What would be the skin effect if the perme-
ability impairment results in k/ks equal to 5 and 10 re-
spectively. What would be the required penetration of
damage to provide same skin effect as the latter case but
with k/ks =5?