Wellbore strengthening through rock consolidation using diammonium phosphate

Abstract

Wellbore instability in chalk formations poses significant challenges during drilling and production due to low rock strength, fluid sensitivity, and creep. This study investigates the efficacy of diammonium phosphate (DAP) as a chemical consolidating agent to enhance chalk mechanical properties under simulated reservoir conditions. Austin Chalk core samples were treated with a 1 M DAP solution at 75 °C and 1000 psi confining pressure for 72 h to promote hydroxyapatite precipitation. Triaxial loading tests compared the treated and untreated specimens. Results demonstrated that the DAP treatment improved the confined compressive strength by 16%–8% across confining pressures (400–1600 psi). Mohr-Coulomb failure envelopes revealed a cohesion increase from 600 psi (untreated) to 1350 psi (treated), with unconfined compressive strength doubling to 3200 psi. These enhancements, attributed to hydroxyapatite cementation, indicate DAP’s potential to mitigate wellbore failure by strengthening the formation itself. The findings advance chemical stabilization strategies for chalk, offering a novel solution to reduce non-productive time and improve long-term well integrity in carbonate reservoirs.

Keywords

Wellbore instability / Failure envelope / Carbonate consolidation / Chalk / Diammonium phosphate

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Mahmoud Desouky: Writing – original draft, Visualization, Validation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation. Murtada Saleh Aljawad: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Methodology, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Murtadha J. AlTammar: Writing – review & editing, Resources, Methodology, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Hector J. Gonzalez-Perez: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Resources, Formal analysis, Data curation. Ahmed Alqroos: Resources, Formal analysis, Data curation.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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