Screen selection involves a multidisciplinary, integrated approach that combines reservoir engineering, completion design, wellbore preparation, and filtercake removal.
Schlumberger takes an engineering-driven, total-system approach to sand control completions that features the tools, fluid chemistries, technologies, software, services, and people needed to extend the life of a completion and to optimize production.
Modeling
We use proprietary modeling tools to understand a reservoir’s tendency to produce sand and the sand’s effects on the completion, including gas/water breakthrough, performance of screens and inflow control devices (ICDs), and cumulative production over a well’s life. Sand Advisor* screen and gravel-pack planning software for screen and gravel selection in open hole applications analyzes formation particle-size distribution and aids in gravel and screen sizing and selection. ICD Advisor* inflow control device planning software, a Petrel* E&P software platform plug-in, calculates critical drawdown pressure to help ensure optimal recovery.
Screen Selection
Screen selection involves a multidisciplinary, integrated approach that combines reservoir engineering, completion design, wellbore preparation, and filter cake removal. Our Sand Advisor software, based on an extensive database of actual particle-size distribution and laboratory results of sand retention tests, aids in gravel and screen sizing and selection. We use this information to optimize screen architecture so that your wells produce economically and at optimal rates.
Manufacturing
We use proprietary manufacturing techniques, precision engineering, and custom-built manufacturing machinery designed, built, and maintained in-house to produce the most robust line of fit-for-purpose screens in the industry.
Quality Control and Assurance
Schlumberger quality management systems ensure that the efficiency and quality of our facilities and equipment are continually monitored and improved and that the processes meet the highest quality standards.
Sand Screen Portfolio
Direct Wire-Wrapped Screens
LineSlot* premium direct-wire-wrapped screens are made with a wire jacket shrink-wrapped directly to the basepipe. Screen components are welded to each other, but there is no welding between the screen and the basepipe, enabling the screen and basepipe to act as a single unit and ensuring that the tension, compression, and torque ratings of the screen are nearly the same as those of the basepipe. Basepipe perforations are designed to optimize flow while retaining strength.
Wire-Wrapped Screens
WeldSlot* slip-on wire-wrapped screens are made of a wire-wrapped outer jacket manufactured separately from the basepipe. The jacket is fitted over the perforated basepipe and welded to the pipe at each end to provide structural support for high mechanical loads. These screens provide more open flow area than slotted liners, increasing flow and productivity.
Prepacked Screens
WeldSlot PP* slip-on wire-wrapped prepacked screens provide a cost-effective sand control alternative with added erosion protection when conventional gravel packing is not feasible or economical.
Premium Sintered Mesh Screens
MeshSlot* premium sintered mesh screens have a single layer or multiple layers of woven wire mesh, sometimes sintered, forming a resilient filter and providing weld integrity and mechanical stability. Mesh screens maintain their strength during installation without altering the filter pore openings. With a unique construction, drainage layers, and an optimized number of basepipe perforations, these screens evenly distribute flow across the full area of mesh and reduce the risk of plugging at the screen face.
Alternate Path Sand Screens
Screens with Alternate Path shunt tubes and nozzles bypass bridges and fill in voids that can occur during gravel and frac packing.
-AllPAC Alternate Path cased hole gravel-pack screen
-AllFRAC Alternate Path cased hole frac-pack screen
-OptiPac Alternate Path openhole gravel-pack screen
-UltiPac Alternate Path extended-reach gravelpack screen
Specialty Screens
Schlumberger specialty screens address emerging unconventional sand control applications, where conventional gravel packs or screens or both are insufficient, such as heavy oil applications in thermal or nonthermal environments. These screens meet rigid quality control standards to ensure maximum screen strength, erosion resistance, and sand retention.
Inflow Control Devices
Inflow and injection control devices (ICDs) balance flow rates across the completion for the entire length of the interval. They dramatically reduce the effect of water and gas breakthrough and optimize injection rates across the full wellbore face.
-ResFlow* inflow control device
-ResInject* injection control device
Introduction of ResFlow ICDs Transitions Wells from 100% Water Production to 70% Oil Production
Operator seeks better method of sand control
A major operator offshore Nigeria planned to complete 16 openhole wells in an unconsolidated low-pressure sandstone formation. The formation contained compartmentalized heavy and viscous oil with variable fluid contact. Extended-reach wells were being used to access and drain the reserves. Lateral variations in permeability tended to create unbalanced inflow along the lateral, resulting in premature breakthrough of unwanted fluids. The operator needed to eliminate the problems that had interfered with production in wells completed in a previous drilling campaign in the same field. Those wells had used only stand-alone wire-wrapped sand screens, which had been unable to regulate flow, resulting in total water production.
ResFlow ICDs succeeded where stand-alone screens could not
To mitigate these problems, the operator chose the ResFlow ICD. ICDs are self-regulating nozzles that help balance flow across the reservoir. The nozzle configuration, including size and quantity, is designed prejob and can be adjusted at the rig site before a completion is run.
ICDs regulated flow and prevented wells from watering out
The initial well was completed with 93 ICDs distributed evenly along the horizontal section. When the well began producing, production logging test results showed that inflow was distributed uniformly from heel to toe, a length of almost 4,000 feet [1,219 m], and water breakthrough was greatly reduced compared with wells from the previous campaign.
This meant that the ICDs were performing as designed—improving sweep along the lateral, deferring the onset of water and gas breakthrough, and preventing the well from watering out at any single point. The oil was able to flow freely over the entire length of the lateral. As a result of this success, the operator elected to install ResFlow ICDs in the remaining 15 wells.