Determination of Formation Grain Size Distribution in an Iranian Sandstone Field

Sand production has been a major problem in the oil industry worldwide for years. Operating costs multiply when sand production wears out equipment and forces expensive workovers. Production of sand seems to be rate sensitive. That is, below some producing rate, no sand is produced. This rate quite often is vanishingly small. The producer has no choise but to produce at a higher rate and to learn to live with the sand. The bridging methods for sand control are either screens or gravel packs. Sand control by any bridging method requires knowledge of the formation size distribution. This is most commonly found with a sieve analysis. In this study, sieve analyses have been performed on samples from an Iranian field, which has sand production problems. The data obtained could be used for gravel pack design. The other problem in these kind of wells is the lack of petrophysical information due to unconsolidated nature of core samples therefore, the data from sieve analyses were also utilized to estimate the original petrophysical properties of the unconsolidated intervals.