Formation Damage

Content of PetroWiki is intended for personal use only and to supplement, not replace, engineering judgment. SPE disclaims any and all liability for your use of such content. Lumps of non dispersed polymer.

Content of PetroWiki is intended for personal use only and to supplement, not replace, engineering judgment. SPE disclaims any and all liability for your use of such content.

Content of PetroWiki is intended for personal use only and to supplement, not replace, engineering judgment. SPE disclaims any and all liability for your use of such content. Movement of small particles (usually 5 microns) through the rock pores.

Content of PetroWiki is intended for personal use only and to supplement, not replace, engineering judgment. SPE disclaims any and all liability for your use of such content. The inward differential pressure difference that will result in part of the filter cake being removed from the face of the formation (usually over the most permeable and higher pressured sections).

Content of PetroWiki is intended for personal use only and to supplement, not replace, engineering judgment. SPE disclaims any and all liability for your use of such content. The act of lifting off part of the mud filter cake, at the most permeable sections of the rock, in response to flow produced by draw down.

SPE disclaims any and all liability for your use of such content. The layer of solids stranded on the face of permeable formations by liquids driven into the rock by pressure differential towards the formation. When sized correctly the filter cake may completely stop losses.

Fines migration is a recognized source of formation damage in some production wells, particularly in sandstones. Direct evidence of fines-induced formation damage in production wells is often difficult to come by. Although most other forms of formation damage have obvious indicators of the problem, the field symptoms of fines migration are much more subtle. Indirect evidence such as declining productivity over a period of several weeks or months is the most common symptom. This reduction in productivity can usually be reversed by mud-acid treatments.

Producing formation damage has been defined as the impairment of the unseen by the inevitable, causing an unknown reduction in the unquantifiable. In a different context, formation damage is defined as the impairment to reservoir (reduced production) caused by wellbore fluids used during drilling/completion and workover operations. It is a zone of reduced permeability within the vicinity of the wellbore (skin) as a result of foreign-fluid invasion into the reservoir rock. Typically, any unintended impedance to the flow of fluids into or out of a wellbore is referred to as formation damage. This broad definition includes flow restrictions caused by a reduction in permeability in the near-wellbore region, changes in relative permeability to the hydrocarbon phase, and unintended flow restrictions in the completion itself.

Swelling clays, although relatively abundant in shales, do not occur as commonly in producing intervals. Thus, formation damage problems with swelling clays are not nearly as common as those associated with fines migration. The most common swelling clays found in reservoir rock are smectites and mixed-layer illites. It was earlier thought that much of the water and rate sensitivity observed in sandstone permeability was caused by swelling clays. However, it is now well accepted that the water-sensitive and rate-sensitive behavior in sandstones is more commonly the result of fines migration and only rarely of swelling clays.

When cement is bullheaded into the annulus to displace mud, the differential pressure between the cement and the formation fluid can lead to a significant loss of cement filtrate into the formation. If, however, large volumes of cement filtrate invade the rock, the possibility of formation damage exists. As the cement filtrate invades the formation and reacts with the formation minerals, its pH is reduced from 12 to a pH buffered by the formation minerals. This rapid change in pH can result in the formation of inorganic precipitates such calcium carbonate and calcium sulfate. Evidence of formation damage induced by cement filtrates has been clearly demonstrated in experimental studies presented in Cunningham and Smith[1]and Jones, et al.[2].