Sand management is one of the biggest challenges facing oil and gas assets worldwide, affecting production, damaging equipment, causing failure and costing producers billions of dollars per year.
Recent hydrocarbon discoveries in deep water regions with high pressure and weak to moderate strength sands under complex production stresses, has focused the need to better understand sand failure mechanisms and the predicted sand production rates. The industry is experienced unprecedented challenges in this field and operators must draw upon a multidisciplinary approach to address these issues. This month’s Sand Management Euroforum, organized by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Aberdeen Section and the Sand Management Network, will highlight best practice in sand management strategy and discuss the progress being made in the oil and gas industry.
Taking place on March 28 and 29 at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre (AECC), global operators including Shell, BP, Maersk Oil and Petronas will be giving keynote presentations.
As well as case studies from Shell’s Gannet and Pierce fields, and BP’s Raven HPHT field in Egypt, this year’s event also sees digitization as a key theme. FourPhase will discuss ‘Data acquisition and visualization – increasing operational efficiency and safety’ whilst ‘A novel computational intelligence approach for acoustic signal monitoring of sand in flowlines’ will be presented by Glasgow Caledonian University.
Steve Hicking, Principle Technical Expert Sand Control for Shell Global, and conference chairman, said: “We have a fantastic program in store for attendees this year and I would encourage industry professionals directly or indirectly involved in sand management to come along and benefit from this wealth of expertise and experience.
“The safe and effective management of sand production is crucial for the industry, particularly with developments in recent years challenging sand control technology. This is a high priority for operators, all of whom will want to ensure cost efficiencies and safe operation. Learning from each-other is absolutely essential and this event will provide an excellent platform for knowledge-sharing within the sector.”
A pre-conference workshop will be held on Tuesday March 27 which will give an introduction to sand management, discussing how it impacts operations, practical techniques and future technologies, as well as interactive demonstrations. The workshop will appeal to drilling, completion, integrity and production engineers. It will also be useful to asset managers who are new to sand-producing fields or who want a refresher on sand management technology and practices.
