What Is Sand Management?
Sand management is an imperative part of each phase of your well’s life — from flowback to early production to steady state. However, all sand management technology isn’t created equal — and neither are desanding services.
Without the right desanding services for each well, operators end up hauling out large amounts of unnecessary equipment — along with extra personnel — only to experience high day rates and increased potential of downtime.
Find out what effective sand management looks like at each stage of your well’s lifecycle so you can enhance production and lower your LOE.
Sand management for producing wells
In its most simple state, sand management for producing wells in the oil and gas industry is about removing solids from your well’s production fluids so it doesn’t flow into your facility or further downstream, resulting in costly damages and washed parts.
In reality, it’s far more complex than that simple explanation. Sand management can only be effective when you have the right equipment and technology that aligns with the unique characteristics of your well. From understanding your well’s expected flow rates and well pressures to your tolerance for sand carryover, we can get an idea of what kind of desanding technologies will be most effective for your well.
However, not all service providers pay this much attention to detail when it comes to selecting desanding technologies. In many cases, the service providers use non-engineered solutions like sand cans and spherical sand traps which are not customized for specific applications. As a result, these sand separators offer poor sand capture efficiency often as low as 50% per unit. In order to remove all of the sand from their stream, operators need to procure multiple sand separators — leading to high daily rental costs (or high CAPEX cost), additional HSE exposure, increased emissions, and excessive labor costs.
Effective Sand Management
With effective sand management services and technology from the team at EnerCorp, operators can enhance production while lowering their expenses.
Specifically, we can help you:
Reduce the cost and lost production during NPT associated with cleaning out three phase separators and tanks in production facilities.- Reduce replacement costs and associated downtime with replacing washed out production chokes, dump valves, pumps, heater coils, and piping.
- Improve production rates by optimizing choke schedules and proppant loading to maximize returns. Sand production rates will no longer need to be a limiting factor for your choke schedule.
- Lower your costs by eliminating the excessive equipment footprint that is typically required with non-engineered flowback and sand management equipment.
Sand management for every phase of your well’s life
Flowback Phase
As the first phase of a hydrocarbon well’s producing life, the rate of sand is extremely high during flowback. During those first few months, the fluid from the well is a mix of crude oil, formation water, natural gas, frac sand, and frac water and chemicals. To avoid operators having to deal with hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to their production facilities and clean-up fees, EnerCorp offers a number of sand management services and technologies designed specifically for flowback. With our industry-leading Sahara and Mojave cyclone sand separators and our efficient filtration technology, we can create a customized flowback solution based on your well pressures and flow rates.
Early Production Phase
The well’s production and pressure declines after the initial flowback stage of the well. However, there is still a significant potential for sand production during this time, which lasts from the end of flowback to the first year of the well’s life. To support our operators with sand management during early production, we offer fit-for-purpose production skid configurations that can remove over 97% of the solids produced. The skid can include EnerCorp’s industry-leading sand cyclones, filtration technologies, or a combination of both depending on the characteristics of your well.
Steady State Phase
After the first year of the well’s life, your well generally experiences moderate to low sand production rates. However, there are other risks to consider, such as a frac hit from a nearby well releasing sand into the hydrocarbon stream of the steady state well. At EnerCorp, our sand management services extend to the steady state phase, where we offer our hydrocyclone and filtration technologies, in addition to the four-phase separator. This fit-for-purpose equipment extends the capabilities of the three phase separator to effectively remove sand in a single piece of capital equipment.
Local sand management service options for your well
In addition to offering high-performance desanding technology for your wells, in local U.S. and Canadian markets, we also offer a number of sand management services with our highly trained and experienced team.
Our sand management services are offered in the following areas:
- Permian Basin
- Haynesville
- Marcellus
- Utica
- Eagle Ford
- Duverney
- Montney
In the flowback phase, our desanding experts can operate our hydrocyclone equipment. As these technologies are highly efficient, fewer personnel are needed at a time on the wellsite, reducing labor costs, emissions, and HSE exposure.
During the early production and steady state phases, our services include:
- Offering a range of sand management solutions to address persistent solids production
- Mitigating sand issues on your well after being hit by an offset nearby frac
- Implementing remote monitoring and automation technologies to give real-time visibility of site conditions
- Checking your wellsite on a daily or weekly basis depending on your needs
- Preparing reports for production related metrics
- Supporting field logistics with your lease operators
Desanding technologies used around the world
As a global organization with customers worldwide, EnerCorp offers sand management technology to operators in Canada, the United States, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. From our 35,000 square foot production fabrication facility in Canada, we can scope, design, and build desanding technology to meet the unique characteristics of your well.
Our production fabrication facility offers complete project packaging, equipment customization, and full project oversight, ensuring our customers have peace of mind at each step. Built to exact standards and trusted by operators all over the world, our facility creates sand management hydrocyclones and filtration systems that capture over 99 percent of sand from the well.
Is sand management a priority at your wellsite?
Sand management is about removing the solids from your hydrocarbon stream during all phases of a well’s producing life. At EnerCorp, we offer a range of industry-leading desanding technologies and sand management services to ensure no sand gets into your production facility or further downstream.
Get in touch with EnerCorp today to discuss your well’s characteristics with our highly trained team. We’ll determine the exact fit-for-purpose solution for your wellsite so you can enhance production and lower your LOE.
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