Potential Use of Blast Furnace Slag and Steel Making Slag for Consolidation of Friable Sandstone Reservoirs

Sand production problems are encountered throughout the world and recently detected in Saudi Arabian oil fields. Maximum reliability and productivity are particularly essential offshore and in remote locations. These objectives are difficult to attain where formation sands are unconsolidated or subjected to failure. Sand production mechanism is exceedingly complex, and it is influenced by every completion operation from first bit penetration to start of production or injection. Sand control by consolidation involves the process of injecting chemicals into the naturally unconsolidated formation to provide an in-situ grain-to-grain cementation. Techniques for accomplishing this successfully are perhaps the most sophisticated undertaken in completion work. Many methods have been suggested to consolidate the wall of the wellbore for few inches or feet deep around the borehole. These methods are either expensive or temporarily. The aim of this work is to find out a byproduct from the Saudi industry able to consolidate friable sand formations. Byproducts used in this work are Steel Making Slag (SMS) and Blast Furnace Slag (BFS) obtained from Hadid steel plant in Jubail. This slag is mixed with chemicals as activators and with sand and cured at 95°C for 24 hours. The compressive strength and the absolute permeability of the consolidated sand have been evaluated. Also, the effect of aging in kerosene as a representative to crude oil and water to show the effect of produced fluids on the consolidated sand has been investigated. The results show that the Steel Making Slag mixed with calcium chloride (CaCl2) and calcium hydroxide (Ca (OH)2) at 30% to 50% by weight of water is able to consolidate friable sand. The permeability of the consolidated sand lies between 70% to 28% of the absolute permeability of the friable sand, which is considered reasonable. Immersing samples in kerosene or water increases both compressive strength and permeability