An Exhaustive Study of Scaling in the Canadian Bakken: Failure Mechanisms and Innovative Mitigation Strategies From Over 400 Wells
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The Canadian Bakken has been produced for over 40 years but with advances in fracturing technology during the last 10 years, there has been an exponential increase in Bakken activity. Concurrent with this, there has been a step-change in frequency and severity of scale formation from high value, high productivity wells. This paper summarizes the scaling observations made over the producing life of this high producing formation drawn from treating and servicing over 400 wells through Southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The most common scale types are calcite and anhydrite, although there is also evidence of siderite and iron sulfide. Formation of scale in Bakken wells is seen from the bottom of the tubing and open-hole sections up through the casing and rods. Formation water salinity can reach over 250,000 mg/L with up to 20,000 mg/L calcium. When combined with the high down-hole temperature, this brine causes a significant challenge for selection and application of scale inhibitor chemistries. A typical scaling life cycle is given for a Bakken extended reach horizontal well. With production reaching maturity, the severity of scaling in this formation has been found to increase. The influence of fracturing and frequent well interventions has been discussed in terms of the profound effect these activities have on the onset of scale formation. The experiences and strategies of over a dozen different operators have been combined, and the lessons learned from these activities used to determine a common approach in the management of scale in these challenging wells. The paper concludes with several detailed case histories. These show how the development of an innovative scale management philosophy has been successfully put to the test in proactively preventing scale, thereby reducing the overall failure rate for the Bakken operating companies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".