Oil-coated Sands?

When drilling an oil well, one of the advances in technology has included the use of proppants

. Proppants are sized particles mixed with fracturing fluid to hold fractures open following a hydraulic fracturing treatment. This allows the treatment to become more cost effective and longer lasting, enabling the reduction of environmentally damaging by-products and lessening the need for subsequent cleanups.

This can help bring the costs of fracturing oil sand fields and oil bearing shale to levels of greater profitability in the long term. This is something that was previously lacking in the marketplace and can put you ahead of your competitors when used in conjunction with other redrilling techniques.

Proppants also are extremely useful in reviving exhausted oilfields for renewed life and greater production. The fracturing process stimulates low permeability reservoirs into higher rates of production by pumping specially engineered fluids into the reservoir which causes the formation of a vertical fracture. Proppants, such as grains of sand of a particular size, sintered bauxite or other high strength ceramic materials, are mixed into the fluids to keep the fracture open when treatment is complete.

The pumping of the liquid into the closed boreholes is done with the power of powerful hydraulic pumps. The sand is designed to allow the fluids to be able to flow out through it and keep the fracture from collapsing back into its self. The use of a broken solid to allow a liquid to flow out through the gaps between the solids is a simple idea that is used commonly in different filtration systems.

The proppant can be coated with different resins to prevent the flowback of the proppant which lengthens the amount of time the treatment is effective. Some companies can coat existing propants in-ground following a fracturing treatment, but obviously the proppant would function better from the beginning of the treatment with this coating in place. Proppant flowback can also damage the well equipment with abrasion to valves, tubing, surface pipelines and other equipment. The treatments for preventing flowback are still being developed, but the use of resins applied to the proppants does help.

Also, maintaining production at a level where the proppant is not caught up in the flow out of the well does help stabilize this issue. Consult with an expert to find the solution that is right for you. Proppants are just one of the exciting advances in oil drilling technologies.

by: Art Gib

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