New Implemented Insights Into Surfactant System Designs Maximizing the Value of a Brown Field Asset
Authors: Addagalla Ajay , El-Sherbeny Wael , Lawal Ishaq G. , El-Araby Mohammad S. 
Published: October 2018

Drilling and completing reservoir formations without causing the formation damage is nearly or almost impossible. In most of the cases, selected drilling or completion fluids that were selected during different phase of the operation while drilling and completing the well causes this damage and act as a barrier for the reservoir’s flow leads to low production levels. Drilling or completion fluid can cause the formation damage due to poor design and selection of the fluid, not having sufficient data on reservoir characterstics, availability and feasibility of the chemicals.

Recent studies shown, most of the reservoir Drill-In Fluids were designed with acid soluble weighting agents particularly if it isopen hole or completing with screens. These weighting agents comes in different sizes and needs to idenitify an appropriate size or a combination of particles that can able to just bridge the reservoir without invading the reservoir. This invasion of solid particles along with the filtrate entered into the formation later contributes to skin damage. Ordinary surfactants cannot able to remove this damage to larger extenet and hence specially deisgned surfatant system have been developed to remediate near-wellbore damage caused by drilling and completion fluids.

The properties of these treatment systems include their ability to solubilize oil and reduces the interfacial tension (IFT) significantly between the organic and aqueous phases which effectively diffuses through the damaged zone without external energy. The inherent properties of these systems make the it ideal for removing induced formation damage as well as an excellent option for aciding the solid particles invaded and make the reservoir completely water-wet. As the time progress and when the formation gets depleted; many accumulations of fine migrates and heavy hydrocarbons are highly expected around the formation tip that normally results in a reduction of hydrocarbon flow. This problem can be eliminated by squeezing such new surfactant into the formation, easily enhaces the production rate and the flow lost would be restored. In open-hole (OH) completions, this specialized surfactant designs have proven very effective in removing Oil Base Mud (OBM) filter cake damage uniformly with delayed reaction time. In cased-hole (CH) completions, these systems have demonstrated a high degree of efficiency to clean damaged perforations with spontaneous reaction time.

This paper presents a technical overview of this relatively new surfactant systems that are suitable to treat for OH and CH remediation operations. The testing methods mentioned in this paper were able to qualify the right type of remediation fluids that can be used for the removal of damage caused before the system is peumped into the well. The main objective of these specialized surfactant systems is to remove the damage caused by OBM filter cakes and improve the production of hydrocarbon instead of drilling a new side track or a well.