Reservoirs prone to producing sand along with oil and gas can cause a lot of headaches for operators.

For starters, the sand can damage the equipment. It can restrict the flow of oil. At worst, eroding formations can collapse and damage the wellbore. The standard response to the sanding issue has long been to place sand screens downhole.

“But that doesn’t really solve the fundamental problem,” says Frank Chang, petroleum engineering consultant at Saudi Aramco’s Exploration & Petroleum Advanced Research Centre in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

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