Sand production is one of major issues facing oil and gas industry. Excess sand production could cause serious problems such as erosion of downhole and surface equipment, reduction of well productivity, increase of well operation cost, etc. Chemical sand consolidation is one widely studied approach to mitigate sand production issue. It involves the injection of reactive chemicals, such as liquid polymeric resins, to oil and gas bearing formations composed of unconsolidated or weakly consolidated sand. The injected resins will solidify under downhole conditions to bond the sand grains together and therefore prevent individual sand grains from moving along with the produced fluids. However, one key challenge that limits the utilization of chemical consolidation approach to control sand production in the field is the reduction of formation permeability after the treatment, in which it will negatively impact well productivity. This is due to the occupation of pore space by the cured resin materials, therefore reducing the fluid flow capacity.<br/>In this study, a new polymeric resin formulation is developed to address permeability reduction issue for chemical sand consolidation treatment.  This is achieved by incorporation of a chemical blowing agent/gas generator into the epoxy resin system. The chemical blowing agent could be activated under downhole conditions to generate gaseous phase. Thus, when the developed formulation is applied for sand consolidation treatment, the epoxy resin sets under downhole conditions to cement the sand grains in the subterranean formation, while the gas generated through thermal decomposition of chemical blowing agent leads to formation of open and connected pore space to maintain reasonable permeability after resin curing and ensure the connected flow pathways for produced hydrocarbons. Two key properties of consolidated sandpacks, i.e. compressive strength and permeability, are measured in order to determine the effectiveness of using this resin formulation for sand consolidation treatment. This study demonstrates that an interconnected porous structure within the polymeric network is beneficial for maintaining formation permeability during a chemical sand consolidation treatment.

Novel polymeric resin formulations for sand consolidation

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ACS Fall 2022

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