Well P1 successfully started production in September 2008, with the second producer and injector brought on line early in 2009. The second producer P2 is located 2 miles away from the production facility and hydrocarbons are produced via a 6” flow line into a single train processing plant at Hummingbird, the floating production and storage facility. Well P2 suffered a catastrophic sand face completion failure and started producing sand after less than a week in production.
This paper presents our experience in successfully managing the sand face completion failure and the resulting sand production problem, from the time it occurred until present. The process of tackling the problems caused by the failure started with the formation of a highly experienced team that could provide engineering, operating and management skills to successfully solve the various challenges of producing, transporting, processing and disposing of large volumes of sand from subsea wells. Development and implementation of the chosen strategy that covers all the aspects of the sand management process is described in detail. Sand and hydrocarbons production, monitoring, well and system integrity, flow assurance, separation, removal and disposal of the produced sand is also described.
