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Lost Circulation Material (LCM)

Applications

SandBlock

Lost circulation in a drilling operation is a critical event that can cause anything from downtime (NPT), Significant loss of drilling fluid to weak or fractured formations or if not handled swiftly, can end up in critical well control operations causing severe NPT and worse.

In well construction, the primary well barriers are relying on critical cementing operations. These operations are regularly corrupted by loss of cement to formation during placement, causing uncertainties to the barrier behind the casing. These situations are very difficult to repair after the cement job is completed and undesired flow may occur behind the casing as a result of this.

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Challenges

The lost circulation issue has been with the drilling industry since the start and many recipes and remedies has been used to stop this. As this is still a common situation around the world causing lost time and resources, we have developed a product that answers many of the problems with the existing available technology.

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Options

Current options used when experiencing a lost circulation situation is to add various plugging materials to the mud pumped to form a plug in the fractures or pores to control/stop the loss. This situation can go on for days with lost productive time and significant loss of mud material as a result.

Alternatively, cement slurries of various weights and compositions related to the formation and situation are used.

Quartzpack

Solution

The QuartzPack™ (QP) used as LCM is an application called SandBlock, that allows a lost circulation situation to be effectively cured, both in unconsolidated weak formations, high permeable zones or through fractures.

There will be no fluid loss from QP itself, due to the low permeability and the large particles that cannot move through the lattice.

When the pressure applied to propagate QP into a fracture is bled off, formation closes and traps the material inside a fracture, which then acts as a permanent seal. QP cannot enter the porosity around the fracture.

The only way to get more material into a fracture is by widening the aperture and radius of the fracture. This again creates additional counteracting, so called hoop stress. The hoop stressed ring around the well bore will act as a reinforcement element of the near-well rock volume; therefore, improved well bore stability.

This phenomenon has been observed in building of arches and modelled with the presence of grain sizes, in the range from 2.5 mm to less than 0,0005 mm, as is the case for SandBlock.

 
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The numbers speak for themselves

4M+
old wells around the world
100k+
new wells being drilled worldwide every year
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Solution that provide sustainable integrity for the future

Unrivaled features compared to traditional well barriers

Success using QuartzPack® in Rig-less MIT-1

Main Benefits

Gas Tight

QuartzPack consist of high quality quartz particles distributed in an ideal size spread from 2,5 mm to nano size. In this ideal mix, smaller particles fill the void between the larger particles. This prevents gas and/or oil from migrating through a vertical column of QuartzPack and hence creating a gas-tight seal.
 

No Shrinkage/Micro Annulus

Unlike most other artificial materials developed to act as sealing materials in oil and gas wells, QuartzPack does not shrink. Hence it will not create micro channels along steel pipes or against the formation (any lithology), where gas under pressure can easily escape if such micro-channels has developed.
 

Environmentally Friendly

QuartzPack is an environmentally friendly zonal isolation material consisting of the natures own substance, quartz, the most thermo-dynamically stable material readily abundant in nature. QuartzPack  is manufactured with no emission and hence reducing 1 ton of CO2 emission for each 1 ton of cement replaced.  
 
 
 

Eternal Hydraulic Head

QuartzPack weight is 2.15 SG (17,9 ppg) and consist of approx. 70% quartz particles and 30% water by volume. This ratio will stay for eternity and hence provide a hydrostatic head which can be designed to maintain hydrostatic pressure overbalance to any zones in the underground, given the wells vertical depth provide enough height for this.
 

Self-Healing

Due to QuartzPack eternal Bingham Plastic behaviour, the mix will fluidize if affected by mechanical stress in the well or by geotectonic movements in the underground. As soon as the surroundings have come to a rest, QuartzPack will come to rest, reconfigured according to changes in geometrics in the underground.
 

No Fractures

QuartzPack will never cure to a solid state. It will behave like a Bingham Plastic material, unlike materials that cure and hardens. Materials that hardens usually has a high compressive strength and can be used as anchoring. 
 
 

Easy to Pump & Replace

QuartzPack behaves as a Bingham Plastic type of material, ie. It acts like a fluid when pumped and yields up when resting. This effect is reversible, which makes QuartzPack a unique and flexible material in combination with all other beneficial parameters it provides. It is therefore easy to place and remove when/if necessary. Can be pumped with existing infrastructure on a drilling rig.

Unbeatable LCM efficiency

Lost circulation during drilling/well operations is a well-known global problem. Sever losses during drilling can become a costly, scary and serious problem. QuartzPack, with its distribution of different size quartz particles, will instantly build a bridge when hitting the loss zone and form an impermeable filter stopping losses. The higher the differential pressure, the harder the quartz particles are squeezed into a fracture, the more efficient is the stop-loss effect.

Non-Degradable / Chemically Inert

QuartzPack consist of high quality quartz particles that are chemically inert against all gasses like CO2, H2S, etc. and most chemicals, which prevent it from degrading over time. QuartzPack will not react with any installations in the well or destabilize any mud systems.