Maintaining the integrity of production lines, lowering operation costs, and minimizing risks for leaks and loss of production continue to be major concerns for the oil and gas industry, particularly companies with high production rates. Downhole corrosion of production tubulars has triggered attention in various oilfields around the world. Many efforts have been devoted to the development of polymeric based chemicals that can readily adsorb and form a protective film on the internal surface of the tube. However, there are two crucial factors that need to be considered in selecting the proper protection mechanism: cost of the chemicals and the effectiveness of the protective film. Regrettably, most of the commercial techniques/chemicals currently available on the market are either high cost and/or do not provide an effective protection in a high temperature (300 oF) environment. This piece of work will discuss the development of a fluid formulation that has the ability to generate, in-situ, a stable protection film that thereby isolates the surface of the tubular and prevents attack by the sour production fluids containing high dissolved H2S content. The fluid is comprised of an engineered sulfide solution and additives. The recipe is designed to enable the sulfide solution to react uniformly with the tubular surface resulting in the formation of a homogeneous thin layer (2.0 um) of stable iron sulfide crystals. Importantly, the homogeneous thin layer will prevent the generation of a solid suspension that could settle down and cause formation damage. Therefore, the additives are mixed into the fluid as one package to enhance the adhesion properties of the film onto the tubular surface and to minimize the potential formation of solid suspension out of metal oxide crystals. The proposed approach utilizes the tubular metal itself as an iron-based source for the protective film. Accordingly, as soon as iron ions are dissolved, they will immediately react with sulfide ions leading to a rapid formation of iron sulfide crystals spread uniformly on the tubular surface as a stable coating. The effectiveness of this new treatment is clearly demonstrated by the measured average corrosion rate and pitting corrosion rate which were found to be below the industrial acceptable limit.

High temperature stable protection film for hydrogen sulfide corrosion control

254th National Meeting (2017)

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