Sand Monitoring Services Ltd (SMS) based in Aberdeen is hosting a free lunch and learn Sand Management Event on 9th September as part of Offshore Europe 2009.

The event, which will be held at SMS's new office premises, is designed to emphasise the importance of sand management by highlighting new technologies and engineering practices that can address the challenges of sand production.

Targeted at professionals involved in the development, implementation and field monitoring of assets as well as sand and solids management programmes, the event bring together a leading panel of academia, consultants, operators and well services experts to share their experiences and knowledge on the process of identifying, evaluating and mitigating against reservoir sand & solids production and their associated problems.

Delegates will gain an insight into the benefits of applying sand management best practice to each of their operations.

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Key speakers include Dr. Stuart Archer, Director of exploHub, Phil McCurdy, Principal Geomechanical Engineer, Senergy and Madjid Alane from BP Surveillance and Andrew Kinsler, Director and Field Services Manager of SMS Ltd. They will focus on cutting edge research strands in exploration geology, sand failure production and a case study from UKCS on production uplift utilising sand monitoring.

Andrew Kinsler said: "According to the HSE's Offshore Division Semi-Permanent Circular, since 1993 at least eighteen dangerous incidents have been directly attributed to produced-sand during oil and gas processing. While these occurrences are mainly related to flowline failures, a significant number are associated with the risks that sand poses to operators, particular in the North Sea.

"Thus as we move into a new era of technological challenges, we want to address the number of problems associated with sand production by bringing together a broader group of technologies and professionals to stimulate new ideas.

"We have opened up this event to reservoir engineering and geology groups as we strongly encourage the integrity and corrosion engineering disciplines to play a more active role in sand management. The aim is to create awareness across the wide ranging disciplines and become familiar with best practices using past lessons and future theories."

During the event, Andrew Kinsler will speak about the application of simultaneous intrusive and acoustic real time sand monitoring technology for well service challenges. Having recently hosted the Sand Monitoring Workshop at the joint SPE/SMN 3rd European Sand Management Forum, Andrew will now provide examples of what would happen if sand is not monitored and the real-life implications of serious incidents that have happened to date.

(GK/BMcC)