Abstract
In order to deal with sand production problems during the process of producing natural gas from hydrate-bearing sediments (HBS) with reservoir-fluid extraction method, a new gravel sizing method named “Hold coarse while eliminate fine particle (HC&EF method)” was developed for clayey hydrate-bearing formations. A hydrate-bearing site in Northern South China Sea was taken as an example to describe detailed gravel sizing procedures. Based on the analysis of basic particle size distribution (PSD) characteristics of HBS at SITE Y, the formation sand was divided into two components, which are coarse component and fine component. Secondly, gravel size for retention of coarse component and elimination of fine component were calculated, respectively. Finally, Intersection of those two gravel sizes was taken as the proper gravel size for marine hydrate exploitation well. The research results show that original formation at SITE Y is clayey sand with poor sorting and uniformity coefficient properties, and proper gravel size for upper segment was recommended as 143–215 μm, while that for lower segment was 240–360 μm. In considering the difficulty of layered sand control operation on offshore platform, proper gravel packing size for SITE Y was recommended as 215–360 μm.
Main idea of the paper has been published on the journal of petroleum exploration and development at 2017, 44(6):1016–1021. This paper is a substantial improvement of the 2017 version.
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Abbreviations
- C :
-
Uniformity coefficient of formation sand, dimensionless
- d :
-
Particle size of formation sand, m
- d5, d10, d16, d40, d84, d90, d95:
-
Particle diameter when cumulative mass/volume is 5%, 10%, 16%, 40%, 84%, 90% and 95% on PSD curve, μm
- d 50 :
-
Median grain size, μm
- d fmax :
-
Maximum particle size of fine component, μm
- Dcmax, Dcmin:
-
Maximum gravel size and minimum gravel size for retention of coarse component, respectively, μm
- D fmin :
-
Minimum gravel size for elimination of fine component when take into account of shale content, μm
- \( D_{\text{fmin}}^{'} \) :
-
Minimum gravel size for elimination of fine component except shale content, μm
- F :
-
Sorting coefficient, dimensionless
- M :
-
Total sand quality used for particle size analysis, kg
- N :
-
Total particle quantity used for particle size analysis
- R m :
-
Gravel size enlargement factor caused by shale content, 160%
- W :
-
Mass fraction for given size in formation sand, %
- ρ :
-
Density of formation sand, kg/m3
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Li, Y., Liu, C., Hu, G., Wu, N., Chen, Q., Lu, J. (2019). Gravel Sizing Criteria for Hydrate Exploitation Wells and Its Application. In: Ferrari, A., Laloui, L. (eds) Energy Geotechnics. SEG 2018. Springer Series in Geomechanics and Geoengineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99670-7_42
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