What is petroleum proppant

With the high pressure solution, the oil proppant is used to enter the formation and fill in the rock fractures, which plays a role in supporting the fractures not to be closed due to stress release, thus maintaining high conductivity, making oil and gas unblocked and increasing production.

Performance requirements of petroleum proppant: 1. The proppant shall have sufficient compressive strength and wear resistance, be able to withstand the strong pressure and friction during injection, and effectively support artificial cracks. 2. The relative density of proppant particles shall be low to facilitate pumping into the well. 3. Under the temperature of 200 ℃, proppant particles will not have chemical interaction with fracturing fluid and reservoir fluid, and the maximum allowable acid solubility should be less than 7%.

At present, the commonly used proppant mainly includes quartz sand, bauxite ceramsite sand and resin coated composite particles. Quartz sand is widely used due to its low cost, low density and easy pumping, but it is not suitable for deep wells with high closing pressure because of its low strength and bottom and poor sphericity, which reduce fracture conductivity. The composite particles of resin coated quartz sand have improved sphericity, strong corrosion resistance, and good conductivity, but the product has a short retention period, high cost, and it is not easy to promote today when cost is paramount. The ceramsite proppant using the Al-V clay ceramsite process has high density, good sphericity, corrosion resistance, high temperature resistance, and high pressure resistance, and the cost can be better controlled, so it is more and more widely used by oil and gas fields. Practice has proved that the production of oil wells fractured with ceramsite oil proppant can be increased by 30-50%, and the service life of oil and gas wells can also be extended. It is a key material for the exploitation and construction of oil and gas low permeability oil and gas wells. It can not only increase oil and gas production, but also extend the service life of oil and gas wells.

The main raw material of ceramsite oil proppant is bauxite, while China is a country rich in bauxite, with highly concentrated bauxite distribution. The reserves of Shanxi, Guizhou, Henan and Guangxi accounted for 90.9% of the total reserves of the country (Shanxi 41.6%, Guizhou 17.1%, Henan 16.7%, Guangxi 15.5%), and the reserves of the remaining 15 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities with bauxite accounted for only 9.1% of the total reserves of the country. The ceramsite proppant manufactured by domestic companies has gradually replaced the conventional proppant sand and entered the American market with its good supporting capacity. Up to now, domestic ceramsite proppant has occupied 13% of the total market share of ceramsite proppant in North America, with an average annual business volume of $3 billion.