SPE 84495
Drawdown Guidelines for Sand Control Completions
David L. Tiffin, SPE, BP America Inc., Michael H. Stein, SPE, BP America Inc., Xiuli Wang, SPE, BP America Inc.
Copyright 2003, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.
This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and
Exhibition held in Denver, Colorado, U.S.A., 5 – 8 October 2003.
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Abstract
This paper details a method for determining maximum safe
production rates for sand control wells. This method was
developed from a thorough compilation of data from over 200
sand control wells. As a result of this analysis, a simple
function of flux (fluid flow per unit area of screen) proved
very reliable at separating wells operating safely from those
resulting in damaged screens or unacceptable amounts of
produced sand.
Prior to this work, BP (and the industry) used a variety of
methods to attempt to optimize production from sand control
wells. Most of these prior methods use pressure drop across
the completion and were loosely based on experience and
rules of thumb. It is shown that these pressure based draw
down limits are either ineffective for managing risk of well
integrity or unnecessarily constrain well productivity.
We are currently using this new flux-based approach as a
basis of design for new wells and to open existing wells to a
maximum safe operating production rate. Significant
production addition has been added without any well failures
as a result of opening up these artificially constrained wells.
We furthermore anticipate preventing future well failures
caused by operating at too high a rate. Earlier in 2002, two
BP-operated sand control wells suffered apparent screen
erosion failures; both operating at low drawdowns and safe
limits using old guidelines, but at flux rates exceeding these
new proposed guidelines.
Introduction
Most operators limit production rates in wells with a sand
control completion for fear of damaging the completion and
losing the well. Operators generally control these wells by
maintaining a maximum pressure drawdown (reservoir
pressure or shut-in bottom hole pressure minus bottom hole
flowing pressure) across the completion. Maximum
recommended pressure drops ranging from 500 psi to 1000 psi
are common. Experience and success of nearby wells is the
usual basis for determining these pressure drawdowns.
Our first attempt at correlating data was to see how the
data lined up with drawdown. This is presented in Figure 1.
Note that the green wells (No problems) had a slightly higher
average drawdown than those that failed (red) as well as a
higher average drawdown than those wells constrained by
sand production (yellow). (Data classification is discussed in
more detail later.) It is clear that drawdown applied in this
way does not help predict safe operating conditions; nor can it
be used to optimize production rates.
Although drawdown is not a good parameter to predict
whether a sand control completion will fail or not, drawdown
or pressure drop across the completion is a key parameter in
determining when the sand matrix "fails" and individual sand
grains can be transported by the fluid flow entering a well.
This may be the basis of using drawdown to control wells with
a sand control completion. Many models and predictive
techniques are available to make this determination based on
rock strength measurements. Depletion forces also act to
weaken the sand matrix resulting in a well capable of
producing sand free at high drawdowns early in well life, but
failing later in life with the same or smaller drawdown after
the reservoir is partially depleted. Also, just because a rock
“fails” does not mean sand will be produced 1-3.
Sand control completions, like frac packs and gravel
packs, are designed to contain the sand whether reservoir
"failure" has occurred or not. For this reason, using drawdown
to control wells with effective sand control completions only
makes theoretical sense when there is an ineffective or
improperly installed completion in place; or in a very
compressible highly depleted formation where wellbore and
screen collapse is a risk. (Our data set contained only one
example of a wellbore collapse and a screen crushing failure
mechanism brought on by excessive depletion.)
Our analysis of screen failures indicated that screen
erosion was by far the most common screen failure
mechanism (other than "infant" failures), even with a good
quality completion in place (complete annulus pack with an
undamaged and unplugged screen). Erosion of the screen is
caused by fluid flow through the screen with a small amount
of fine sand particles. These solids greatly accelerate erosion
of the screen.
Erosion of the metal screen by solids is a function of many
variables, but most notably, it is a function of the kinetic
energy of the downhole fluid. For a given fluid, kinetic
2 SPE 84495
energy increases with the velocity or flux of the fluid. Flux is
defined as volumetric flow per unit area and most commonly
has units of velocity.
Having identified the most common failure mechanism
(erosion) as well as the primary variable causing that erosion
(flux), the purpose of this work was to try to identify a
correlation between downhole flux through the screen and
screen integrity. In a downhole environment, both the velocity
and amount of solids flowing through the screen is a function
of the fluid flow or "flux" through the screen.
Flux-based production limits were successfully applied to
sand control wells in BP by a team of engineers at one of our
offshore fields4. This team used experimental results from
Southwest Research Institute to obtain a maximum flux rate
through the screen at which no damage would be expected for
a 10-year life.5 Drawdown limits were changed from 750 psi
to this maximum calculated flux at the screen basepipe
diameter. Inflow area of the screen was calculated at the
basepipe and then corrected using skin calculations to estimate
partial penetration and percent wellbore area flowing.
Production increase results by applying these new flux-based
limits were quite successful for the original completions in this
thick fairly homogeneous sand.
Results
Data Collection and Classification
Building on successful experience with flux-based drawdown
limits, together with a better understanding of screen failure
causes; it was decided to see if we could develop guidelines
that could be used to better operate sand control wells. With
this purpose in mind, we collected additional historic field
data to determine what key variables were controlling success
and failure of screen life in the field. Under what conditions
have screens failed due to apparent erosion? Could the data be
correlated with variables to separate the successful wells from
those that cut out? Could we develop a simple function of
downhole flux that could be used to predict when wells start to
fail?
In order to consistently and systematically collect data, a
questionnaire was developed to collect data thought to be
pertinent to calculating drawdown pressure and flux. As we
did not know what factors were critical for success, the
questions ranged across the operation. There were several
details, assumptions, and decisions that we made that were
important. These were:
Production rates change with time. It was decided to
work with the maximum downhole rate obtained over a 2-
week period. Note that for gas wells downhole rate can
INCREASE with depletion at constant surface rates because
the gas formation volume factor increases with decreasing
pressure.
Completion quality was based on original completion
reports and data. We needed to revise this assessment for
consistency across our entire database.
Drawdown was defined as shut in bottom hole pressure
(reservoir pressure) minus flowing bottom hole pressure. It
was often necessary to calculate these values. Well test data
was matched with a nodal analysis program, which was then
used to calculate bottom-hole pressures when bottom-hole
gauge data was unavailable.
Drawdown was calculated at the time of maximum
production.
Formation volume factors can change significantly with
time as the reservoir depletes - especially for gas wells. If a
gas well is operated at a fixed pressure based drawdown, the
maximum DOWNHOLE production rate can occur later in
well life, while the maximum surface rate occurs early in well
life. Formation volume factors were calculated (or measured)
at bottom hole flowing conditions.
As oil wells are depleted below their bubble point, free
gas enters the wellbore and must be considered. This free
gas was not considered early on in our data collection and
analysis, but all data has been subsequently corrected for this
free gas (and occasionally, the correction was significant).
A summary of all the field data is presented in Table 1. As
can be seen, data from a large number of wells was collected.
All sand control completion types are represented. Most data
is from the Gulf of Mexico and Trinidad.
Success and failure proved difficult to define; so wells
were grouped into the following categories:
Poor completion quality (Plotted as asterisks and
excluded from correlations).
Evidence of screen damage upon installation
(including plugging),
An incomplete annulus pack,
Evidence of failure induced by repeated acidizing,
or
Wells with very high or increasing mechanical skin
Erosion failures (Red)
Sanded up
Produced proppant/gravel
Produced sand larger than screen aperture
No completion quality issues
Well rates restricted due to sand production
(Yellow)
Producing fine reservoir sand
Rate restricted to manageable sand amount
Restricted due to surface handling issues, chokes
cutting out, etc.
Includes wells where we found gravel incorrectly
sized too large.
Producing small amounts of fine sand, but no
need to restrict rates (Blue)
No sand, no problems (Green)
Data Correlation – Cased Hole Completions
Flux is volumetric rate per unit area of screen and a direct
function of surface rate. Determining downhole rate from
surface rate was relatively easy with the use of accurate
formation volume factors. All flowing phases were
considered in this volumetric calculation. Determining what
area of screen to use was not so straightforward. Flow
velocity through the basepipe and corrections to inflow based
on skin and partial penetration did not correlate well.
SPE 84495
Correctly obtaining a function to accurately represent screen
inflow area was key to obtaining a reasonably good flux based
function that was able to differentiate successfully operated
wells and those that failed.
Two important steps were taken in order to adjust inflow
area of cased hole sand control completions before success
and failure were successfully correlated with flux. The first
adjustment was to calculate perforation area rather than
basepipe inflow area. This adjustment resulted in more
realistic values of flux at which one might expect erosion
damage. It is important to note that we are not claiming that
screen inflow area is the same as perforation area. We used
perforation area because gravel thickness in the annulus is
very small and we have observed erosion holes in screens that
correspond to perforation holes.
The second adjustment to inflow area that was not
considered earlier proved critical to success. It was observed
during analysis of failed wells that failures were occurring in
wells with high permeability streaks. It was also observed
while studying a failure in the previously cited offshore
development where we first used flux-based limits that
existing operating limits, though quite successful for big
blocky sands, did not work in this failed well completed in a
fairly heterogeneous sand. This led to the conclusion (and
well known reservoir engineering principal) that inflow area
along the wellbore is a function of kh and varies with reservoir
heterogeneity. We attempted to account for this with the
introduction of “heterogeneity index”. This correction led to
successfully being able to correlate wells that failed with high
calculated flux values. For most of our data, this
heterogeneity index was estimated from log responses from
the porosity, resistivity, and gamma ray logs. When possible,
we tied log response to actual core data. An alternate method
to determine the heterogeneity index is to use production log
test data. Production log test data was utilized in about about
15% of the wells (except in a few high rate high rate gas wells
(on the order of 100 MMCF/D) in which production log tests
were commonly run at about 25% of the normal production
rates due to tool limitations at high rates. Hill6 discusses
production log tool limitations in high rate gas wells.)
In addition to this heterogeneity index, a fixed percent of
perforations were considered open and flowing and only net
pay was considered to contribute. The open perforation
assumption was uniformly applied to all of the cased hole
completions in the database. Therefore, if the percentage of
open perforation is different from the assumption, the critical
C factor will shift accordingly.
A plot of drawdown vs. perforation velocity incorporating
these two adjustments is presented in Figure 2 for oil wells
and Figure 3 for gas wells. For both cases, it can be seen that
the percentage of red and yellow data points (confirmed screen
erosion failures and wells with production restricted because
of sand production) increases quite dramatically as perforation
velocity increases. Maximum perforation velocity (for a 2-
week period) is plotted with the corresponding drawdown at
that point. Note that the selection of drawdown as the y-axis
is arbitrary as we have shown in Figure 1 that screen erosion
failure is not tied to drawdown. We did not observe any
difference in calculated flux rates required for failure between
frac packs and cased hole gravel packs.
3
For gas wells, the onset of a high failure rate appears to
occur around 20 ft/sec, while this value is roughly 10 ft/sec for
oil wells. 10 ft/sec correlates well the onset of observed
erosion damage in premium screens during testing at
Southwest Research.6
C-factor correlation
Erosion is a function of the sand carrying capacity of the fluid
flowing through the screen. For this reason, it is not surprising
that a difference was observed between gas and oil wells.
Erosion experts have recognized this and developed a “C-
factor” to account for differences in erosion with different
fluid phases7.
C = (Densitymix) ½ x (Maximum Perforation Velocity)
Where Density is in pounds/cubic foot and perforation
velocity is in ft/sec. Mixture density is obtained by weighting
each phase density by its volume percent of flow. The
resulting mathematical term is basically the square root of the
kinetic energy of the fluids that carry sand into the screen.
The use of a kinetic energy term is appropriate for erosion
by a fluid that moves straight into an object such as a gravel
pack screen, whereas the kinetic energy or the C factor
concept is not valid in a flow-geometry such as an elbow at
the wellhead8. Erosion experiments through elbows show that
for the same velocity and sand concentration gas causes more
erosion8. This is because with the centrifugal force developed
through the elbow, gas does not have the viscosity to keep the
sand in the flow stream. Our database shows the opposite
effect, increasing the fluid density increases erosion.
All the data from Figures 2 and 3 are presented in Figure 4
where the x axis has been re-defined from perforation velocity
to perforation velocity C-factor. Note that now both gas and
oil data are depicted on the same plot. Using C-factor, there is
no need to establish different operating guidelines for gas and
oil wells.
Data in Figure 4 can be re-plotted to more dramatically
demonstrate the correlation between success and failure with
our perforation velocity C-factor function. This is presented
in Figure 5. Data has been grouped into x-axis "buckets" or
groupings and percent failure (red or yellow data points) as a
function of the number of wells in each "bucket" or grouping
is plotted. Total number of wells in each grouping is also
listed in this figure. Wells with completion quality issues
(asterisks) were not included. This figure clearly defines safe
and unsafe operating regimes, as well as an operating regime
that is safe to operate in as long as risks are understood and
managed (with use of a sand detector for instance).
A clear break in the data is not evident in Figure 5, nor was
one expected. Some successful wells may have never needed
sand control to begin with and some failures may have been
the result of completion problems that we were not able to
discover during our investigation. The size of the sand
particles and their concentration would obviously be different
for each well and these variables also affect erosion.
Unfortunately, sand concentration for failures is not accurately
known. In addition, it must be remembered that we are
correlating against PEAK production rate (over a 2 week
average) during the life of these wells. Some wells were
4 SPE 84495
operated at or near this peak rate for significantly longer than
others.
All data presented in Figure 5 are from wells with “good”
completion standards. Those completions excluded from this
correlation, and new wells excluded from using this
correlation to set maximum safe operating conditions include:
1) an incomplete annulus pack, and 2) evidence of screen
damage upon installation, 3) evidence of screen failure soon
after the last of many acid jobs, or 4) wells with very high or
increasing mechanical skin.
It is important to keep in mind that all data correlated sits
within a set of standard completion practices. Perforation
density, screen diameter, annulus pack thickness, fluid
viscosity are a few examples of data that generally fit within a
well-defined range. It would not be a good idea to use this
correlation on wells with parameters outside those used to
build the correlation. For instance, applying this correlation in
a well with very high viscosity oil would probably not be
valid.
Open Hole Completion Data
All previous discussion focused on cased hole frac packs and
cased hole gravel pack wells. There is also a need to properly
correlate flux limits for open hole sand control completions.
Thirty-two wells with open hole gravel packs were
investigated and added to our database. A summary of these
wells is presented in Table 2.
Flux in open hole wells was determined similarly to the
cased hole wells. For open holes, inflow area of the screen
perforated base-pipe was used rather than perforation area.
Reservoir heterogeneity and net pay corrections were still
used, but there was no need to reduce the number of
contributing perforations, as was the case with cased holes.
Not surprisingly inflow area of open hole sand control
completions calculated in this manner tended to be much
greater than the previously discussed cased hole wells. As a
result, calculated velocities or flux rates in open hole wells
were generally much lower than those calculated from cased
holes. The reasons for this are the differences in establishing
in-flow area, the fact that generally open holes have a longer
completion interval than cased holes, and the area open to
flow in the base pipe is also greater than the area of open
perforations in cased hole completions.
Data for all open hole wells are presented in Figure 6.
Note that there is only one well failure in this data set.
(Although there were completion quality concerns including
use of a slotted liner in this particular well, these concerns did
not meet our very narrow criteria for an asterisk.) Not only is
there only one failure in this data set, but also no wells were
constrained because of excessive sand production.
It is important to note that the data in Figure 6 does not
include those wells where an open hole gravel pack was
attempted but not successfully completed. All wells reported
a complete gravel pack - usually as a result of a volumetric
calculation and occasionally a log to confirm.
In summary, there are not a sufficient number of open hole
screen erosion failures to develop drawdown guidelines based
on flux through the screen. It is suspected that the same
guidelines developed for cased hole sand control completions
would apply to open holes (with some minor modifications);
however there is not sufficient field data (failures due to
erosion as a result of too high a production rate) to verify this
assertion.
Most open hole sand control failures appear to have root
causes other than too high a production rate resulting in too
high a flux through the screen causing screen erosion. Almost
all open hole gravel packs and screen only completions
erosion failures occur as a result of an incomplete annulus
pack. For one, an incomplete annulus pack does not provide
nearly as effective sand control as would be obtained with a
complete pack. This results in a higher probability of solids
passing through the screen – and it is solids that are the
primary cause of screen erosion. It also appears that an
incomplete annulus pack makes calculation of inflow area
(and thus fluid flux through the screen) extremely problematic.
It is suspected in some cases that annular fluid flow is utilized
as fluid seeks the path of least resistance, avoiding flowing
through sections of screen that get packed off with produced
solids. Flow through the screen then gets concentrated to
smaller and smaller areas of uncovered screen (resulting in a
high enough flux through the screen that erodes the screen).
Other Screen Failure Mechanisms
Production rate guidelines developed in this report assume a
failure mechanism based on screen failure due to too high a
flux through the screen resulting in erosion. Other failure
mechanisms were identified during investigation of these field
data. A series of wells failed in one GOM field because of
massive reservoir depletion and compaction forces. Wells
failed within a very short time in an entire block as a result.
Well failure was due to casing collapse, screen collapse and
other problems in well construction not designed to withstand
these tremendous forces. This failure was not solely a result
of pulling the wells too hard, but too much depletion given
overburden forces. Little could have been done short of being
aware of this inevitable collapse and either shutting down
production or injecting a fluid to keep reservoir pressures
sufficiently high to prevent collapse. This was the only
documented case of this type of failure we came across,
though there were vague references to similar failures. As a
result, it is suspected that this failure mechanism is probably
pretty rare – especially in cased hole completions.
Screen failure by erosion is of course only one of countless
failure mechanisms. Others include: Corrosion, QA/QC
manufacturing defects, Installation damage, plugging by scale,
asphaltenes or paraffin, and countless others. All these need
to be considered during the process of establishing production
limits in sand control wells.
Use of Flux Correlation to Improve Reservoir
Management of Wells with Sand Control
Completions
As wells were entered wells into our database we observed
that some of the wells needlessly were choked back. These
wells had good annular gravel packs. The C factors were well
below 60. They had no history of increasing skin, which might
suggest partial plugging of the screen. Moreover, they did not
produce sand. We then performed nodal analysis on the
candidate wells to determine how much more they could
SPE 84495
produce without risking erosion to the gravel pack screen, as
determined by comparison with our existing database.
Figure 7 shows production rates from one of the wells
where we used our new methodology to increased production
rates. This well, constrained by a 750 psi drawdown limit was
producing gas at 35 MMSCF/D with a CGR of 50
STB/MMSCF, and no water. The wellhead pressure was 7000
psig. Reservoir heterogeneity was average. The estimated
maximum velocity through the perforations was 4.7 ft/sec.
The C factor was 22.0.
We began lowering the wellhead pressure, and eventually
increased the gas rate to 73 MMSCF/D at a CGR of 44
STB/MMSCF with no water and a wellhead pressure of 3000
psig. The resulting drawdown was 2250 psi. At that point the
estimated maximum flux and C factors were 12.8 ft/sec and
51.4, respectively. The well has not produced any sand. Water
production has recently begun at the well, as there is water
influx. Opening up the well has therefore not only increased
well rate, but also increased gas reserves by out running the
aquifer more than if we had not opened up the well. The
estimated reserve increase is 5.6 BSCF and 0.26 MMBO.
Application of Surveillance Techniques to Reduce
the Risk of Screen Erosion
The C Factor approach can be enhanced by additional
surveillance. For example, acoustic sand detection9 and
intrusive erosion probes10 can be utilized to detect sand at the
surface, subsea wellheads, and risers. Hydrocyclones may be
used at the surface to collect the sand and determine if the
sand is formation sand or gravel from the sand control
completion. Production log tests may be run to look for
potential high velocity spots in the completion. Down-hole
temperature data from the production log test may also prove
valuable in identifying high velocity zones as gas may cause
cooling, and oil may cause heating (Joule-Thompson heating
effect). The C factor can be re-calculated on a regular basis
with each well test. In fact, the C factor calculation and sand
alarm data can be incorporated into an automation alarm
system to keep the operators aware of any potential risks.
Conclusions
A simple method to optimize production and safely operate
sand control wells (cased hole frac pack and cased hole gravel
pack completions) has been developed based on a function of
flux through the screen (volumetric rate per unit area of
screen). This method is based on a correlation of field
production data from over 200 wells (primarily in the Gulf of
Mexico and Trinidad). Too high a rate results in an
unacceptable well failure rate and too low a rate results in lost
production.
Only wells with a complete annulus pack around an
undamaged screen were found to correlate. It was also
observed that wells with a very high or increasing mechanical
skin did not correlate. For this reason, wells must meet at
least these completion standards in order to use these
recommendations. Furthermore, since this is a correlation of
field data, calculation methods used to develop this correlation
must be followed in order to maintain consistency.
It is recommended to use this correlation to design and
operate cased hole sand control wells. Three operating
5
regimes were identified: Rates that result in clearly safe wells,
rates that clearly posed too high a risk, and a regime between
these two limits. Risks of operating wells in this middle
category can probably be safely managed with: 1) a thorough
well review to insure a top quality completion, 2) a sand
detector to serve as an early warning of sand production, 3)
continuous downhole calculation of the flux function via the
use of a downhole pressure gauge and well test data to alarm
operators through an automation system when the calculated
flux is too large; and, 4) if the operating unit agrees that
productivity benefits outweigh the slight increase in risk
which occurs at the higher rate. It is important to keep in
mind that operating guidelines are for maximum operating
rates. Care should be exercised in opening and closing wells
slowly with prudent ramp up schedules, especially if operating
at well rates close to maximum recommended values.
It is likely that open hole gravel packs can also safely
operate at these conditions, though this was not confirmed
because of the lack of failures in open hole gravel pack wells
that met these same completion standards.
It is not realistically possible to analytically calculate flux
through a downhole screen. Although downhole fluid flow
rates are relatively easy to determine from surface rates,
calculating the area of screen this fluid flows through requires
many assumptions.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the following: Ian Lambeth for
building and maintaining the data base as well as technical
support in several other areas; Paul Martins for relentlessly
driving this study; Fraser Elliott, Dan Gibson, Phil Smith, and
Clive Bennett for invaluable technical input; Countless other
BP engineers for finding and providing data.
References
1. Vaziri, H., Barree, R., Xiao, Y., Palmer, I. and Kutas, M. 2002.
What is the Magic of Water in Producing Sand? SPE Annual
Technical Conference, SPE 77683, San Antonio, TX.
2. Vaziri, H., Xiao, Y. and Palmer, I. 2002. Assessment of several
sand prediction models with particular reference to HPHT wells.
SPE/ISRM OilRock 2002, SPE 78235, Irvine, TX.
3. Vaziri, H., Lemoine, E., et al. 2000. How Can Sand Production
Yield a Several-Fold Increase in Productivity: Experimental
and Field Data? SPE 63235, Annual Technical Conf, Dallas,
Oct 2000.
4. Fraser Elliott, BP: Personal Communications, (2001, 2002)
5. Svedeman, Steve; Southwest Research Institute, Personal
Communications, (2000-2002)
6. Hill, A.D.: Production Logging – Theoretical and Interpretive
Elements, SPE Monograph Volume 14, Henry L. Doherty
Series, Richardson, TX (1990).
7. API Recommended Practice for Design and Installation of
Offshore Production Platform Systems, API RP 14E, American
Petroleum Institute, Third Edition, Washington D.C., December
1981.
8. McLaury, B.S., and Shirazi, S.A.,: “Generalization of API RP
14E for Erosive Service in Multiphase Production, : SPE Paper
56812 presented at the 1999 SPE Annual Technical Conference
and Exhibition held in Houston, TX 3-6 October 1999.
9. Mullins, L.D., Baldwin, W.F., and Berry, P.M.: “Surface
Flowline Sand Detection,” SPE Paper 5152 presented at the
Second Midwest Oil and Gas Symposium of the Society of
6 SPE 84495

Petroleum Engineers of AIME, Indianapolis, IN, March 28-29,

1974.
10. Braaten, N.A., Johnsen, R., Simes, G., Solberg, T. and Søntvedt,
T.: “A New Concept for Sand Monitoring: Sand Probe Based
on the ER Technique,” OTC Paper 6985 presented at the 24th
Annual OTC in Houston, TX, May 4-7, 1992.

Tables

Region/ Oil or Gas

Completion type Totals
Gulf of Mexico Trinidad Other Sub-Total
Oil Gas Oil Gas Oil Gas Oil Gas
Cased Holes
Gravel Pack 8 15 31 10 39 25 64
Frac Pack 35 23 7 35 30 65
Expandable Sand Screen 7 1 7 1 8
Screen Only 1 1 1

Totals 43 39 31 17 7 1 81 57 138

Open Holes
Gravel Pack 10 2 9 1 12 31 3 34
Gravel Pack
1 8 5 14 14
with Pre-drilled Liner
Screen Only 2 3 5 5

Totals 13 2 17 1 20 50 3 53

Insufficient Data to Classify

Unknown 20 20 20

Totals 20 20 20

Total Number of Wells 211

Table 1: Summary of Field Data

Region/ Oil or Ga s
Completion type Totals
Gulf of Mexico Trinidad Other Sub-Tota l
Oil Ga s Oil Ga s Oil Ga s Oil Ga s
Gravel Pack 10 2 9 1 1 20 3 23
Gravel Pack
1 8 9 9
with Pre-drilled Liner

Totals 11 2 17 1 1 29 3 32

Table 2: Summary of Open Hole Data

SPE 84495 7

Figure 1: Drawdown Data for Wells in Database

Figure 2: Drawdown vs. Estimated Perforation Velocity for cased hole oil wells (gravel pack and frac pack)
8 SPE 84495

Figure 3: Drawdown vs. Estimated Perforation Velocity for cased hole gas wells (gravel pack and frac pack)

Figure 4: Drawdown vs. C Factor for cased hole oil & gas wells (gravel pack and frac pack)
SPE 84495 9

Figure 5: Percent cased hole sand control wells choked back or failed due to sand production
as a function of perforation velocity c-factor (gas and oil wells combined)

Figure 6: Drawdown vs. Estimated flux for OH gravel packs

10 SPE 84495

Figure 7: Production History from a Completion Where C-factor correlation was used to safely Increase Gas Rate