Frequently Asked Questions
EnerCorp has provided sand management products and/or services on several thousand wells across the USA and Canadian regions. EnerCorp’s in-house fabrication division has designed and built more than 2,000 sand management vessels over the past 10 years. Our equipment has been used successfully in operating environments ranging from dry gas to moderately heavy oil and everything in between. The EnerCorp management team has an individual average of 15-25 years of energy industry experience both in North America and around the world leading teams in the completions / production, sand management, and fabrication sectors both in large, public corporations and small start-up oilfield services companies.
On wells where EnerCorp is providing services, we are generally measuring sand returns on an hourly basis and providing this information along with well flow characteristics to the operator. This data helps the client understand how their well is producing sand relative to flow rates, pressures, and choke settings. Many clients use this information to optimize the way in which they flow their wells to better manage sand returns, IP rates, and choke settings. This data is helpful not only on current wells, but in driving decisions for future wells.
By removing sand from the production stream more effectively, EnerCorp gives clients the capability to flow their production to central processing facilities (CPFs). With sand-free production, concerns for accelerated wash outs, pump seal failures, and leaks in piping and other equipment from sand is eliminated. Our aim is to reduce your flowback footprint by sending solids free production to your facilities sooner and helping you manage that process with minimum personnel.
EnerCorp has managed wells that have produced more than 76,000 pounds of sand in one day and over 7,100 pounds in one hour on a single well. We are providing services and technology on locations on a daily basis where we sand capture rates range from under 20 pounds to well over 5,000 pounds a day. Utilizing our application engineering staff, we will apply our technology to address any sand problem our clients have.
EnerCorp is a sand management company; we remove sand from produced hydrocarbons. We provide these technologies and services throughout a well’s lifecycle (from initial production to plug and abandonment). We do provide our capabilities during the flowback or initial production phase of a well’s lifecycle. During flowback, EnerCorp can also supply traditional flowback equipment like test separators, plug catchers, and other accompanying hardware if it is necessary, but our aim is to reduce these expenditures and focus on sand mitigation.
Flowback is the first stage of a hydrocarbon well’s producing life. Before flowback begins, the well is drilled and then it is fraced. Usually, while those operations are being conducted, all of the production equipment is brought to the site and the production facility is constructed. When all of these operations are complete, the operator is ready for flowback. Learn more about flowback
With traditional flowback job rig-ups, you will have a lot of equipment on location if your well is producing a moderate to large amount of sand. Generally, we see two sand traps, a plug valve manifold, a three-phase separator, and a flare. For this much equipment, you will likely need two operators per shift to support well-site operations. Learn more about traditional flowback
In Flowback 2.0, we bring in our patented cyclonic technology, the Mojave Dual Cyclone. In some cases, we also use our Scorpion or ScorpionXT sand filtration technology. This rigup will reduce the equipment footprint slightly and significantly reduce sand related issues during operations. Learn more about Flowback 2.0
In Flowback 2.0+, we utilize the Sahara Advanced Cyclone to greatly simplify flowback operations and provide unparalleled sand-capture rates, working effectively across a broad range of flow regimes. This virtually removes all sand out of your hydrocarbon production stream with a single piece of equipment. Learn more about Flowback 2.0+
Because EnerCorp has the capability to capture more than 99% of the sand being returned, many clients are able to send production directly to their facilities. At the very least, clients are able to minimize traditional flowback and well testing equipment only to the time period where they may need the extra capacity if their facility cannot manage the production rates.
Sand traps and spherical sand vessels are generally relying only on gravity separation principles to help remove sand from production. In applications where sand volumes are light or where the produced sand is very large diameter, these products may be adequate. However, when 100 mesh or even 40/70 mesh sand is being used as part of the stimulation treatment, often these technologies only result in a 50% capture rate or lower for sand. By contrast, cyclones (when appropriately engineered and applied) create a vortex in the separation vessel that spins the sand out of the production stream and allows clean hydrocarbons to be produced.
Most cyclones on the market today are not engineered products, this is particularly true in most upstream land markets. EnerCorp’s value proposition is that we have developed, through rigorous engineering and multiphase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling, cyclone technologies that are 38-94% more efficient than most other products on the market. Additionally, it is imperative to perform application engineering in the field to ensure that the cyclone technology will be effective. If inlet velocities are too high or too low, the cyclone will not function as expected. EnerCorp always works with our clients before the job starts to understand the expected flow and pressure regimes in order to deploy the right technology for the job.
Many companies use computational fluid dynamics. The difference between what most companies are doing and what EnerCorp is doing is that we are modeling multiphase (solids, water, oil, gas) flow through our technologies and designs. Many companies are modeling single phase flow (water or oil or gas) with solid particles injected in the flow stream. This is not an appropriate representation of the flow regime and will not produce accurate results. The process EnerCorp has committed itself to has taken years to develop due to the amount of time a single simulation requires in order to produce a single data point result. Our teams have been running these simulations for years, and continue to run them to better learn how we can optimize our technology.
Our claims for sand removal efficiency are generally made considering 150 micron (100 mesh) sand particle sizes. However, we are capturing sand well below this size and are often able to achieve our claimed efficiency percentages with sizes smaller than 100 micron (33% smaller than 100 mesh).
Yes. Our technology is incorporated into NACE compliant vessels.
For our cyclones, the maximum pressure is 15,000 psi and the maximum temperature is 400 degrees Fahrenheit. For our Scorpion filter, the maximum pressure is 5,000 psi and the maximum temperature is 400 degrees Fahrenheit. For our ScorpionXT filter, the maximum pressure is 3,000 psi and the maximum temperature is 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
We can provide a custom design that meets your production facility needs. Your EnerCorp sales representative can work with you to evaluate your needs and identify if the four-phase production separator is a good fit for your application.
We offer both API and ASME products to meet differing client preferences. API is the industry standard that most clients tend to prefer for wellhead equipment while ASME is typically preferred for facilities equipment. Since EnerCorp technologies can be engineered to be placed at the wellhead or within the production facility, we have manufacturing capabilities to meet either industry standard. Other factors that can drive these decisions include weight considerations, maintenance factors and access to internals, and other varying factors.
Yes, our systems are extremely efficient. Specifically:
- Mojave Cyclone is 85% to 90% efficient
- Sahara Cyclone is >97% efficient
- Scorpion & ScopionXT Filters are >99% efficient
We back up this claim through actual measurements. We have measured sand production captured in our products in field applications and have checked for downstream carry over. Additionally, because our Scorpion Filter series offers fixed media filtration that is sized to a specific micron rating, we can provide certainty that sand is being captured at the filter.
Each product in the EnerCorp portfolio has different sand capture capabilities at varying price points. Our objective is to advise you to make the most economical product selection(s) that meet your sand mitigation needs. This could be choosing a higher price point product, but one that allows you to buy less equipment overall. By making a selection like this, not only can you spend less overall on equipment, we may also be able to lower your personnel costs and maintenance needs (for long term installs).
EnerCorp is able to offer a complete range of ancillary equipment to provide our sand management capabilities throughout the life-cycle of your well. This includes flow iron, 4-phase test separators, dual screen plug catchers, plug valve choke manifolds, 6”x60’ flare stacks, emergency shut-in devices (ESDs), flowline restraints, containment packages, blowdown vessels, sand quantification hardware, and much more.
EnerCorp was formed in December 2017 when DynaCorp Energy Services and Energes Oilfield Solutions merged. DynaCorp Energy Services was founded in 2008 while Energes Oilfield Solutions was founded in 2013. The management teams from both legacy businesses continue to operate the EnerCorp entity and have been running these organizations for 5-10 years on average.
Read more about the History of EnerCorp.
There will always be some amount of a pressure drop across any form of compact sand separation equipment whether it is a sand trap, spherical, cyclone, or filter. EnerCorp’s filters are designed with significantly larger inner diameters (IDs) than the flow iron being used. By using a very large ID, the filtration technologies that we utilize help to minimize the pressure drop experienced on the well.
As sand starts to be captured in our filters, we initially will backflush the filter screen and blowdown the sand. This operation can be done multiple times over the course of days or weeks depending on sand production. As sand continues to be captured by the filter, we will pull the screen(s) and clean them as needed based on allowable differential pressure. With our ScorpionXT, we simply divert the flow to the second filter chamber while we backflush or clean the first screen. The typical clean time for a screen is between 15 and 20 minutes. All of EnerCorp’s filtration systems have overhead gantry devices that help eliminate the need for multiple people to perform this service as well as significantly reducing HSE exposures related to screen removal.
Yes. EnerCorp sand management equipment is designed to be fully closed loop and we have designs for blowdown vessels that can be tied into your emissions management equipment (i.e. flares or other means of managing emissions).
