Paper: Chemical Control of Scale in Producing Wells and Lease Equipment

Scale has been a major problem in producing wells practically as long as water has been produced along with oil and gas. At the present time, thousands of wells in the Permian Basin are being treated to combat this scale problem. The purpose of this paper is to acquaint the field operating personnel with some of the reasons why scale is formed, the chemicals which have been used in the past for scale treatment, and the chemicals which have been recently developed. Also, a good portion of the discussion is devoted to the results of the use of these newly developed chemicals. Because of the limitation of time, this paper does not include remedial type treatments such as acid treatment of carbonate scale, or acid and certain additives for treatment of sulfate scales. Possibly this subject can be covered at a later date.