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Freshwater scarcity is a highly pressing and accelerating issue facing our planet. Therefore, there is a great incentive to develop sustainable solutions by reusing wastewater or produced water (PW), especially in places where it is generated abundantly. PW represents the water produced as a by-product during oil and gas extraction operations in the petroleum industry. It is the largest wastewater stream within the industry, with hundreds of millions of produced water barrels per day worldwide. This research investigates a reuse opportunity for PW to replace freshwater utilization in well stimulation applications. Introducing an environmentally friendly chelating agent (GLDA) allowed formulating a PW-based fluid system that has similar rheological properties in fresh water. This work aims at evaluating the rheological properties of the developed stimulation fluid. The thickening profile of the fluid was controlled by chelation chemistry and varying different design parameters. The experiments were carried out using a high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) viscometer. Variables such as polymer concentration and pH have a great impact on the viscosity, while temperature and concentration of the chelating agents are shown to control the thickening profile, as well as its stability and breakage behaviors. Furthermore, 50 pptg of carboxymethyl hydroxypropyl guar (CMHPG) polymer in 20 wt.% chelating solution was shown to sustain 172 cP viscosity for nearly 2.5 h at 150 °F and 100 S−1 shear rate. The newly developed fluid system, solely based on polymer, chelating agent, and PW, showed great rheological capabilities to replace the conventional stimulation fluids based on fresh water. The newly developed fluid can also have economic value realization due to fewer additives, compared with conventional fluids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of well cleanup involves the removal of an impermeable layer of filter cake from the face of the formation. The inefficient removal of the filter cake imposes difficulty on fracturing operations. Filter cake's impermeable features increase the required pressure to fracture the formation. In this study, a novel method is introduced to reduce the required breakdown pressure to fracture the formation containing the water-based drilling fluid filter cake. The breakdown pressure was tested for five samples of similar properties using different solutions. A simulated borehole was drilled in the core samples. An impermeable filter cake using barite-weighted drilling fluid was built on the face of the drilled hole of each sample. The breakdown pressure for the virgin sample without damage (filter cake) was 6.9 MPa. The breakdown pressure increased to 26.7 MPa after the formation of an impermeable filter cake. Partial removal of filter cake by chelating agent reduced the breakdown pressure to 17.9 MPa. Complete dissolution of the filter cake with chelating agents resulted in the breakdown pressure approximately equivalent to the virgin rock breakdown pressure, i.e., 6.8 MPa. The combined thermochemical and chelating agent solution removed the filter cake and reduced the breakdown pressure to 3.8 MPa. Post-treatment analysis was carried out using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and scratch test. NMR showed the pore size redistributions with good communication between different pores after the thermochemical removal of filter cake. At the same time, there was no communication between the different pores due to permeability impairment after filter cake formation. The diffusion coupling through NMR scans confirmed the higher interconnectivity between different pores systems after the combined thermochemical and chelating agent treatment. Compressive strength was measured from the scratch test, confirming that filter cake formation caused added strength to the rock that impacts the rock breakdown pressure. The average compressive strength of the original specimen was 44.5 MPa that increased to 73.5 MPa after the formation of filter cake. When the filter cake was partially removed, the strength was reduced to 61.7 MPa. Complete removal with chelating agents removed the extra strength that was added due to the filter cake presence. Thermochemical and chelating agents resulted in a significantly lower compressive strength of 25.3 MPa. A numerical model was created to observe the reduction in breakdown pressure due to the thermochemical treatment of the filter cake. The result presented in this study showed the engineering applications of thermochemical treatment for filter cake removal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydraulic fracturing consumes massive volumes of freshwater that is usually scarce and costly. Such operation is not sustainable, and hence seawater could be used as an alternative. Nevertheless, seawater has high total dissolved solids (TDS), affecting the fracturing fluid rheology and providing a damage potential to the subterranean hydrocarbon reservoirs. Resolving these issues requires fracturing fluid systems with many additives, which results in an expensive and non-eco-friendly system. This study proposes eco-friendly and biodegradable chelating agents that could replace many additives such as scale inhibitors and crosslinkers. The study aims to optimize the rheology of seawater fracturing fluids using a chelating agent and polymer. By optimizing N,N-Dicarboxymethyl glutamic acid (GLDA) conditions, high viscosity was achieved using a standard industry rheometer. The GLDA was mixed with carboxymethyl hydroxypropyl guar (CMHPG) polymer and tested in both deionized water (DW) and seawater (SW). The polymer was examined first, where the rheology did not show a time-dependent behavior. The polymer in SW showed a slightly higher viscosity than in DW. The GLDA and CMHPG were tested at different temperatures, pH, and concentrations. These sets showed a time-dependent viscosity behavior, which can be utilized in various fracturing steps. Results showed that the solution pH and GLDA concentration significantly impacted the fluid viscosity magnitude and behavior. The developed formulation is shear thinning, where the viscosity declines as the shear rate increases. The temperature negatively impacted the viscosity and caused the formulation to break. The study provided an understanding of how to optimize the rheology of SW fracturing fluid based on GLDA chelating and CMHPG polymer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foam has many applications in the oil and gas industry, either in hydraulic fracturing, enhanced oil recovery, or drilling operations. The success of these operations depends largely on understanding the behavior of foam rheology, which is complex. The literature contains many models used to estimate the effective bulk foam viscosity; most were based on fitting parameters estimated from limited-experimental data. Nevertheless, the fitting parameters are not valid at different operating conditions such as temperature, pressure, and shear rate. This results in models with limited applicability as the laboratory conditions are hardly replicated. In this study, we generated 360 data points of effective bulk foam viscosity using the high pressure high temperature (HPHT) foam rheometer device. A wide range of conditions was examined, such as temperature, pressure, shear rate, foam quality, and composition. The gas-phase consisted of either CO 2 or N 2 , while four types of water representing different salinities were used in the liquid phase. The foam was generated using seven different commercial surfactants at different concentrations. Also, low pH chelating agent and corrosion inhibitor were added in some experiments. The data pool was analyzed using four machine learning techniques: Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Decision Trees (DT), Random Forest Regressor (RFR), and K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN). ANN showed the highest accuracy with R2 of 0.972 and 0.985 on the training and testing datasets, respectively. Also, the relative importance of features was examined using Pearson, Spearman, and Kendall correlation coefficients. The most significant parameters in reducing foam viscosity were temperature, corrosion inhibitor, and shear rate, respectively. On the contrary, foam quality positively impacted the foam viscosity, where 80% foam quality was the maximum tested condition. The impact of pressure, surfactant concentration, water type, and chelating agents were complex. This paper provides a simplified ANN-based model which can be used on the fly to predict the effective bulk foam viscosity in both laboratory and field conditions. • This research generated 360 data points of effective foam viscosity utilizing the HPHT foam rheometer. • The data pool was analyzed using four machine learning techniques. • The performance of ANN was much better than the other three techniques. • The sensitivity analysis with the proposed ANN model showed that it can predict the physics-based behavior. • An empirical model was provided in this study to predict the effective foam viscosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foamed acid is usually an HCl acid-based stimulation fluid applied to carbonate reservoirs. However, this study investigates the rheology of a CO 2 foamed chelating agent, L-glutamic acid-N, N-diacetic acid (GLDA), that acts as less corrosive, environmentally friendly, and more stable foamed acid. Foam rheometer and analyzer were used to study the foam rheology, quality, size and structure, and half-life. Five different commercial surfactants with different chemical structures were investigated. The study was conducted at 100 °C, 1000 psi, 3.5 pH level, and various water salinity, resembling harsh reservoir conditions. The general trend showed that the higher the water salinity, the higher the effective viscosity. It also showed that the chelating agent improved the effective viscosity of the high total dissolved solids (TDS) water samples. The highest viscosity (76 mPa⋅s) was attained by mixing GLDA with a cationic alkyl diamine derivative surfactant in formation water at a 100 1/s shear rate. The prolonged constant shear rate experiments revealed that some formulations are stable for more than 8 h. The study revealed that higher surfactant concentrations did not result in improved performance. For the first time, the study reveals that chelating agents could be used as a stable stimulation foamed fluid at harsh reservoir conditions. • The rheology of chelating-based acid prepared in a different water medium, various surfactants, and at HPHT was investigated. • The study proves that a chelating agent (GLDA) can be used to create a stable and high viscosity foamed acid. • The use of GLDA improved the surfactants' viscosity values when prepared in synthetic seawater and formation water. • Adding the chelating agent in DI water decreased the viscosity values of most of the tested surfactants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matrix acidizing is a well stimulation method that is applied to enhance productivity. The success of a stimulation job depends mainly on the efficiency of the acid systems that are employed. This study investigated a new and efficient acid system that is biodegradable, not corrosive, and safe to handle. The system efficiency was compared to that of HCl and chelating agents. Acid coreflooding has been applied to chalk, dolomite, and limestone carbonate rock samples to measure the efficiency in terms of injected pore volume to breakthrough (PVBT). The rock samples were characterized in terms of porosity, permeability, composition using X-ray diffraction (XRD), and pore distribution using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). The effluent was collected at different times and analyzed using induced coupled plasma (ICP). Medical computed tomography (MCT) was used to visualize the interior of the rock samples after acidizing. The new acid system was more efficient in terms of acid spending than straight HCl acid and chelating agents in Indiana limestone. At the optimum injection rate, chelating agents had an optimum PVBT value of about 15 compared to 0.85 for plain HCl acid. Using the new acid system resulted in an optimum PVBT value of only 0.41, which is less than half of HCl acid. A numerical wormhole simulator was implemented to match the experimental PVBT and assess the reactivity of the acid system. • A novel acid system has been identified to be better than aqueous HCl. • A modelling approach reproduces the wormholing. • Different lithologies react (systematically) different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]