Proppant Flowback Control Using Cost Effective Methods

During the past several years, production and service companies have been trying to solve an old problem that occurs after fracture of productive zones in the Permian Basin. Many solutions have been used with little or no success to prevent proppant flowback. The problem of proppant flowback occurs in both cased hole as well as open hole completions. New applications using old completion technology have been applied recently to improve control of proppant flowback. The technology used was developed from sand control methods dating back to the 1g70 t s. 1,2,3,4 These methods consist of slurrying the same mesh sand used during the fracturing process with a resin. This yields a complete sand resin and catalyst mixture to ensure proper setting of sand. The ability to alter the catalyst makes it an attractive alternative due to the wide range of pump times available. The original slurry was developed to place an artificial zone in a hard rock, open hole environment following a propped fracture treatment. The slurry is allowed to set up and then drilled to a size known to be smaller than the original open hole section. This will give a permeable ring of resin-set sand to prevent proppant from flowing back into the wellbore. The liquid resin squeeze technique, used in a cased hole application, was conceptually designed to utilize the in-place proppant material. This resin bonding of the proppant will create a permeable barrier preventing proppant flow into the wellbore. This paper will describe, in detail, a case study of a field in West Texas and how to prevent proppant flowback in both open and cased holes using slurried resin and sand. It will also evaluate the well's performance.