Geomechanical stability analysis for selecting wellbore trajectory and predicting sand production

Abstract

Geomechanical stability plays an important role in the development of long and deep wells. Borehole collapse, circulation losses and sand production are costly problems for the petroleum production. In the study presented here, a model based on Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion is used to analyze wellbore stability for three synthetic cases with different stress regimes. For each case, the analyses are performed to select wellbore inclination and azimuth for instability minimization. After the most stable well direction is selected, the analyses are carried out to determine free-sanding bottom hole flowing pressure (BHP) associated with different values of reservoir pressure in order to predict potential of sanding in the future production process. The study shows that geomechanical stability analysis can provide valuable supports for selecting wellbore trajectory and controlling sand production.