BUSINESS GOALS  

     Our business goals are to:

• Provide a user-friendly, portable computer simulator (Windows OS),
• Provide software for production engineers to determine the incipience of sand production so that sand control methods can be effectively applied,
• Assist completion engineers in designing an optimized perforation strategy,
• Predict critical drawdown/depletion and flow rate to the initiation of massive sand production,
• Assist engineers in managing sand production in either oil or gas reservoirs in horizontal wells,
• Determine the critical BHP or mud density for wellbore stability,
• Quantify a screen criterion for open hole well completion,
• Evaluate sand cut and the enhanced reservoir performance during cold production operations,
• Analyze thermal stresses and temperature change near a wellbore, subject to conductive/convective heat flow, and wellbore stability design,
• Conduct coupled geomechanics and multiphase flow simulations,
• Predict optimum gas injection rate and BHP during underbalanced drilling,
• Optimize production processes such as artificial lifting, tubing size selection, reservoir simulation and IPR-TPR and nodal analysis.
• Determing stress profile near fault region
• Design HF in HDR for EGS
• Developing FE code simutations in unconventional reservoirs
• Simulation naturally fractured reservoirs

     Industrial Experiences:

1) Sand control, management, and optimized production

2) In-situ stresses determinations near a fault region: Developing an finite element algorithm for far-field stresses based on the in-situ stresses extracted from wells.

3) Wellbore stability near a fault region: in-situ stresses differ in different regions of a fault. The wellbore failure risks, collapsing, and fracturing pressures must be determined based of the locations of the planned wells against fault center and locations away from the fault.

4) Wellbore stability in producing well after fracturing and injection: Producing well instability occurs in northwest China where tectonics structure is complex. Formation damage and possible failure along different wellbore sections faces may change the critical collapsing pressures. The strength reduction and higher collapsing pressure may be expected after fracturing and during production.

5) Wellbore stability in fractured formations: The geomechanical properties of the weak plane dominate the strength of the fractured formation, not the rock sample extracted during coring. A weak plane Mohr-Coulomb criterion is used for wellbore stability analysis and 20 wells in Sinopec are used to verify the model

6) Production change in Stress-sensitive formations: permeability change in the fractured media is dominating the permeability along the natural fractures. A dual-porosity model is applied to a field where productions decline are observed six months after production. A critical pressure is identified after this pressure no production increased may be expected by a drawdown increase.

7) Breakdown pressure determinations in staged fracturing horizontal well in shale gas formations: oriented perforation may pose different fracturing pressure due to the induced stress changes near a perforation hole. The induced stresses near a wellbore is superposed with those due to an oriented perforated hole. A critical fracturing pressure based the fracturing pressure from a perforated hole oriented from a location where the least induced compressive stresses can be found. A realistic fracturing pressure can be calculated by proposed model.

8) Injection strategy for EGS in HDR: a coupled system between low-permeability formation and wellbore is developed. Both hydraulic and thermal conservation equations along the wellbore and between the formation are established. Heat extraction and temperature change from the HDR formation to the surface can be calculated and an optimized strategy may be obtained.

9) Sanding prediction in Gas-Hydrate-bearing sediment: A constant wellbore temperature depressurization process is proposed for onset of sand production prediction. A fully coupled THMH model is developed and the hydrate decomposition zone and induced stresses near a wellbore are calculated. Both production and induced sand risk are analyzed.

10) Sand prediction and control in injecting well: Sanding production has been observed in injecting wells. A much higher pressure gradient may be expected during shut-in well due to an much higher formation pressure is built up inside the formation near the injecting well, depending on the magnitude of the maximum injecting pressure. A much higher sanding risk shall be expected in the injecting well when a wellbore shut-in takes place.