Work Out Why the Well Underperforms Before Deciding How to Treat It
Formation Damage, Skin Diagnosis & Well Productivity
Applied productivity engineering, covering formation damage mechanisms across drilling completion and production, skin decomposition and diagnosis, laboratory and field damage assessment, damage prevention by fluid and completion design, matrix stimulation design, and the evaluation of treatment candidates and outcomes.
Formation Damage, Skin Diagnosis & Well Productivity
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Formation Damage, Skin Diagnosis & Well Productivity - RE-FDSK-PEA27
| Code | Date | Time | Duration | Location | Currency | Early Bird Fee Per Person |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RE-FDSK-PEA27 | 28 Jun - 02 Jul 2027 | 10 AM CST | 4 Hours Per Day |
Online |
USD |
4000 |
Boost your team's skills and your budget! Enjoy group discounts for collaborative learning. Send an inquiry to info@peassociations.com.
Formation Damage, Skin Diagnosis & Well Productivity
Description
A well producing below its potential is losing revenue continuously, and the industry's normal response, stimulation, is frequently applied without establishing what is actually restricting flow. Total skin measured from a well test is a composite of mechanical damage, perforation geometry, partial penetration, deviation, turbulence and multiphase effects, and only the damage component responds to a stimulation treatment. Treating a well whose skin is dominated by limited entry or turbulence produces no gain and consumes the treatment budget.
This training covers the diagnosis and the correction. Damage mechanisms are developed by their origin: drilling fluid invasion, solids plugging, filtrate incompatibility, clay swelling and fines migration during drilling; cement and completion fluid damage during completion; scale, wax, asphaltene, sludge, fines migration and relative permeability effects during production; and injectivity damage from solids, oil carryover and bacterial activity during injection. Skin decomposition follows, separating the components and identifying which are addressable. Diagnostic methods are then covered through well test analysis, production analysis, production logging and laboratory core flood assessment. Damage prevention through fluid selection, drill-in fluid design, completion practice and underbalanced techniques is addressed. The training closes with matrix acidising design for sandstone and carbonate, fluid selection, diversion, treatment execution, candidate selection and post-treatment evaluation.
Skin decomposition is the discipline's central skill. A composite skin of plus eight might be entirely mechanical damage, which acidising would remove, or it might be plus two of damage and plus six from a limited perforation interval, in which case acidising delivers a quarter of the expected gain. The components are separable using well test data, completion geometry, multi-rate testing and production logging, and doing that work before designing a treatment is what distinguishes a stimulation programme with a good success rate from one without.
Damage is largely created rather than encountered. Drilling fluid invades, its filtrate reacts with formation clays, its solids plug pore throats, and the extent of that damage depends on fluid design, overbalance, exposure time and formation mineralogy. Completion fluids, cement filtrate, perforating debris and kill fluids each add their own. Most of this is preventable at a cost far below the cost of remediating it afterward, which makes formation damage a design subject as much as a treatment subject.
Not all damage is worth removing. Damage confined to a few centimetres around the wellbore in a high permeability formation may impose a modest skin with limited production impact, while the same treatment applied to a well whose productivity is limited by reservoir permeability delivers nothing. The production gain from removing a given skin depends on the reservoir, the drainage radius and the completion, and calculating it before committing to a treatment is straightforward and frequently skipped.
Finally, treatment outcomes need to be measured. A stimulation programme with no post-treatment evaluation cannot improve, because the relationship between candidate selection, treatment design and outcome is never established. Measuring skin before and after, comparing achieved gain against predicted gain, and feeding that back into candidate selection is what turns stimulation from an expenditure into a managed programme.
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Identify formation damage mechanisms arising during drilling, completion, production and injection
- Decompose total skin into mechanical, geometric, turbulence and multiphase components
- Diagnose the cause of productivity loss using well test, production and logging data
- Calculate the production gain achievable from removing a given skin component
- Design laboratory core flood programmes to assess damage and screen treatment fluids
- Specify drilling, drill-in and completion fluids to minimise damage
- Design perforation and completion geometry to minimise geometric skin and turbulence
- Design matrix acidising treatments for sandstone and carbonate formations
- Select and apply diversion techniques and specify treatment execution
- Select stimulation candidates and evaluate treatment outcomes against prediction
Organisations sending participants to this training will:
- Improve stimulation success rates through better candidate selection and diagnosis
- Avoid treatment spend on wells whose skin is not removable by stimulation
- Reduce formation damage created during drilling and completion operations
- Increase well productivity and reduce production loss from avoidable damage
- Improve injectivity and injection well life in water injection projects
- Build a feedback loop between treatment design, execution and outcome
Participants will:
- Decompose skin and identify what is actually restricting a well
- Predict the production gain a treatment will deliver before committing to it
- Specify fluids and practices that avoid creating damage
- Design matrix stimulation treatments for sandstone and carbonate
- Evaluate treatment results and improve subsequent design
- Build a skill that directly increases production on existing wells
- Production engineers and production technologists
- Completion and well engineers
- Reservoir engineers working on well performance and productivity
- Well intervention and stimulation engineers
- Drilling engineers responsible for fluid selection and formation exposure
- Production chemists supporting well treatment programmes
- Service company technical staff designing stimulation treatments
Module 1 - Well Productivity Fundamentals
- Radial flow equation and productivity index
- Skin definition and its effect on productivity
- Relationship between skin, damaged zone permeability and radius
- Production gain from skin reduction and its calculation
- Effective wellbore radius concept
- Productivity of vertical, deviated and horizontal wells
- Recognising underperformance: expected against actual productivity
- Benchmarking wells within a field
- Deciding whether a productivity problem is worth addressing
Module 2 - Skin Components and Decomposition
- Total skin as a composite of separable components
- Mechanical damage skin
- Perforation skin: density, penetration, phasing, crushed zone
- Partial penetration and limited entry skin
- Deviation and horizontal well geometric skin
- Gravel pack and sand control completion skin
- Rate dependent turbulence skin
- Multiphase and condensate banking skin
- Fracture and stimulation negative skin
- Decomposing measured skin using completion data and multi-rate testing
- Identifying the removable fraction of total skin
Module 3 - Damage Mechanisms During Drilling
- Overbalance, invasion depth and exposure time
- Solids invasion and pore throat plugging
- Filtrate invasion and its effects
- Clay swelling and its mineralogical dependence
- Fines migration and mobilisation
- Emulsion blocks and wettability alteration
- Water blocking and capillary end effects
- Mud type effects: water based, oil based, synthetic
- Drill-in fluid design and bridging particle selection
- Filter cake formation, quality and removal
- Damage in horizontal and long open hole sections
Module 4 - Damage During Completion and Workover
- Cement filtrate invasion and its effects
- Perforating damage and the crushed zone
- Underbalanced and overbalanced perforating
- Completion and packer fluid damage
- Kill fluid and workover fluid damage
- Solids in completion fluids and their control
- Gravel pack and screen installation damage
- Scale and precipitate formation from fluid incompatibility
- Damage from stimulation treatments themselves
- Practices that minimise completion induced damage
Module 5 - Damage During Production and Injection
- Scale deposition in the near-wellbore region
- Wax and asphaltene deposition and their conditions
- Fines migration under production and critical velocity
- Sand production and its productivity effects
- Relative permeability damage and water blocking
- Condensate banking as a productivity mechanism
- Emulsion and sludge formation
- Bacterial plugging and biofilm formation
- Injectivity damage: solids, oil carryover, bacteria, incompatible water
- Thermal fracturing and injectivity in water injection wells
- Monitoring damage development over time
Module 6 - Diagnosis Methods
- Well test analysis for skin determination
- Multi-rate testing to separate turbulence from mechanical skin
- Production data analysis for productivity decline
- Production logging: flow profile, contribution by interval
- Injection logging and profile assessment
- Wellbore and near-wellbore imaging
- Sampling and analysis of produced solids and deposits
- Chemical analysis of produced water for scale and corrosion evidence
- Distinguishing near-wellbore damage from reservoir depletion
- Building a diagnostic sequence for an underperforming well
Module 7 - Laboratory Assessment
- Core flood testing for damage assessment
- Return permeability testing
- Formation mineralogy and its relevance to fluid selection
- Clay content, type and sensitivity testing
- Fluid compatibility testing
- Acid response and solubility testing
- Scale prediction and inhibitor testing
- Emulsion and wettability testing
- Designing a laboratory programme to support a treatment decision
- Limitations of laboratory results and their field extrapolation
Module 8 - Matrix Stimulation Design
- Matrix acidising objectives and its distinction from fracturing
- Sandstone acidising: mud acid systems and reaction chemistry
- Preflush, main flush and overflush design
- Precipitation risks in sandstone acidising and their avoidance
- Carbonate acidising: wormholing and reaction kinetics
- Acid type, concentration and volume selection for carbonates
- Emulsified, gelled and retarded acid systems
- Additives: corrosion inhibitors, surfactants, iron control, clay stabilisers
- Treatment volume and injection rate design
- Maximum injection pressure and fracture avoidance
- Non-acid treatments: solvents, mutual solvents, chelants
Module 9 - Diversion, Execution and Evaluation
- Why diversion is required in heterogeneous and long intervals
- Mechanical diversion: packers, coiled tubing, ball sealers
- Chemical diversion: viscous, foam, particulate systems
- Diversion selection and design
- Treatment execution and real time monitoring
- Pressure response interpretation during treatment
- Nodal analysis based treatment monitoring
- Flowback, cleanup and its design
- Post-treatment evaluation: skin measurement, production gain, economics
- Comparing achieved against predicted outcome
- Candidate selection criteria and screening workflows
- Building a stimulation programme with measured performance
Upon successful completion of this training course, delegates will be awarded an official Certificate of Completion issued by the Petroleum Engineers Association (PEA), an ISO 9001:2015 certified training organization. The certificate carries 10 Credits and formally records the total learning hours completed.
Each certificate is signed by the Course Facilitator and the CEO of the Petroleum Engineers Association, and serves as verifiable proof of professional training that delegates can present to employers and professional bodies worldwide.
Frequently Asked Questions
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