Experience with Slimhole Gravel Packs

Abstract This paper presents a case history of a slim hole gravel packing operation and completion. The gravel/water pack was carried out in a domestic oil well of OMV, Austria in the oil & gas province of the Vienna basin. In the past, slim hole well completions being not common have kept most of the production & service engineers from putting any effort to design an inside casing gravel pack for slim holes to overcome the problem of sand production from unconsolidated sand formations. With our experience, OMV is able to produce oil and gas from slim holes. Production history of our gravel- packed slim hole wells shows, that a proper design and a good on-site job execution made it possible to install successfully an inside casing gravel pack. The gravel pack work string had to be redesigned and adapted for being applicable to slim hole conditions. It is to be noted that the design and the manufacturing of all desired equipment was done inhouse using entirely OMV 's own resources without any outside help. Drilling slim holes through unconsolidated hydrocarbon bearing formations is no more a disadvantage for producing these reservoirs. Inside casing gravel packing to prevent moveable sand from flowing can be successfully installed in slim hole sections.