Our scale management services address barium sulfate scale and other scale problems and can incorporate strategies for prevention, prediction and remediation.

Scale management, including barium sulfate scale control, is a discipline that aims to counteract the effects of scale deposition and its negative impact on oil and gas infrastructure. While scale deposition is not a new occurrence, it has growing implications for the industry as it moves into the future.

Production tubulars and surface facilities are vulnerable to various types of scale formation, including barium sulfate scale, which blocks perforations and valves and accumulates throughout processing equipment. 

Scale can form due to corrosion, H2S souring, CO2 degassing, temperature fluctuations or the mixing of incompatible injection and formation waters. 

Utilising our extensive scale management experience and knowledge, we can work with you to address your barium sulfate scale and other oilfield scaling challenges. 

The level of support we provide is customised to meet your individual requirements. Services we deliver include the regular monitoring of oilfield water chemistries, the selection and optimisation of scale inhibitors and laboratory simulation testing.

Our capabilities include:

Field survey and collection of samples and data

  • Intertek CAPCIS chemists work with the client to plan an effective sampling campaign before mobilising to site, ensuring representative samples are collected from appropriate sample points and stabilised to ensure consistency of results, even when overseas shipment is required back to our laboratory facilities.

Scale Prediction 

  • We carry out scale formation assessments using ‘Multiscale’TM, a windows-based software thermodynamic predictive model, designed to calculate pH, multiphase equilibria and possible scale formation during oil recovery.

Assessment of scale inhibitor performance

  • The test conditions are extracted from the water analyses, and the actual production and operating data. The most severe conditions are commonly used to define the laboratory test conditions. In order to evaluate scale inhibitor performance it is necessary to replicate the solution chemistry of the field waters in terms of its chemical composition, CO2 partial pressure, and temperature. Various ratios of injection water and formation water are mixed together in temperature controlled test cells the appropriate partial pressure of CO2. Two types of test procedure are available: Static Jar Tests and dynamic Scale Loop (Tube Blocking) Tests

Choosing us as your scale management partner offers the reassurance that you are working alongside world-class experts and engaging reliable, trustworthy services that add value to your business. 

Our chemists, engineers and consultants are informed by more than three decades of in-house pioneering research and development and are supported by cutting-edge exploration and production laboratories and technologies.