Wellbore Stability Analysis for Predicting Sand Production

Abstract

Geomechanical stability has become regular consideration from oil exploration to production. Borehole collapse, circulation losses and sand production are costly problems for the petroleum production. In the study presented here, a model based on Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion is used to analyze wellbore stability and predict sand production for a well in a field of Vietnam. The study shows that geomechanical stability analysis can provide valuable supports for selecting wellbore trajectory and controlling sand production. The future works important to wellbore stability analysis for Vietnam fields are also proposed.