Expensive water acquisition and disposal

Globally, oilfield operators must pay high costs for water acquisition and produced water disposal. Municipal and state restrictions make fresh water difficult to obtain and therefore more costly.

Faced with these challenges, an operator in California sought a cost-effective method of preparing well treatment fluids using produced water. In this effort, several serious problems had to be addressed:

• Conventional fluid treatments were expensive, time consuming, and energy intensive
• Polysaccharide-based well treatment fluids prepared with produced water showed poor fluid viscosity
• Pretreatments with biocide, an additive that kills bacteria, were ineffective

New fluid stabilizer additive compound

Schlumberger applied a simple, low-cost fluid stabilizer additive compound to the produced water. In less than 10 minutes, the stabilizer-treated produced water was ready to use in well treatment fluid preparation. The resulting fluid did not suffer any of the fluid viscosity problems encountered with polysaccharides such as guar. It was also capable of denaturing bacterial enzymes in produced water (the main cause of polysaccharide damage).

Cost savings for 33 wells

Using produced water for a 33-well campaign rather than custom formulations of fresh water and potassium chloride (KCl) saved the operator a substantial amount of money. The company has since used the successful formulation in more than 100 jobs.