An Integrated Framework of Stress Inversion and Coupled Flow and Geomechanical Simulation for 4D Stress Mapping
- Authors
- A. A. Bubshait (University of Southern California) | F. Aminzadeh (University of Southern California) | B. Jha (University of Southern California)
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.2118/190048-MS
- Document ID
- SPE-190048-MS
- Publisher
- Society of Petroleum Engineers
- Source
- SPE Western Regional Meeting, 22-26 April, Garden Grove, California, USA
- Publication Date
- 2018
- Document Type
- Conference Paper
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 978-1-61399-599-0
- Copyright
- 2018. Society of Petroleum Engineers
- Disciplines
- 1.10 Drilling Equipment, 1.10 Drilling Equipment, 5.1.2 Faults and Fracture Characterisation, 0.2 Wellbore Design, 0.2.2 Geomechanics, 5 Reservoir Desciption & Dynamics, 5.5 Reservoir Simulation
- Keywords
- Coupled Flow and Geomechanical Simulation, 4D Stress Mapping, Stress Inversion
- Downloads
- 1 in the last 30 days
- 112 since 2007
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A change in pore pressure due to production/injection causes changes in both the total stress and the effective stress in the reservoir. These stress changes, when projected onto a fault, may induce fault failure and seismicity depending on the fault rheology and friction parameters. A seismic event can be characterized by the moment tensor and the focal mechanism, which are related to the change in stress tensor causing the event. The objective of this paper is to use the theories of poroelasticity and stress inversion to develop a framework for mapping spatiotemporal changes in reservoir stresses caused by injection and production processes. We use a poro-elastoplastic simulation approach in CMG STARS to examine stress changes resulting from production in a reservoir with a normal fault. Production-induced increase in the von Mises stress and the effective mean compression cause plastic failure within the fault. We model the shear slip as a function of the plastic strain and compute the moment magnitudes of equivalent microseismic events. The focal mechanisms of these events are used in MSATSI, a MATLAB Package for Stress Inversion, to obtain the magnitudes and directions of three principal stresses. The stress inversion algorithm is modified to calibrate the principal stresses with the stress solution from the poro-elastoplastic simulator. We find that as production continues in the reservoir, the magnitudes and directions of stresses evolve in time. The result is a framework that provides a 4D (time-lapse) stress map of a reservoir while honoring both the production/injection and microseismic data.
File Size | 1 MB | Number of Pages | 18 |
Jha, B., & Juanes, R. (2014). Coupled multiphase flow and poromechanics: A computational model of pore pressure effects on fault slip and earthquake triggering. Water Resources Research, 50(5), 3776-3808. doi: 10.1002/2013wr015175
Martinez-Garzon, P., Kwiatek, G., Ickrath, M., & Bohnhoff, M. (2014). MSATSI: A MATLAB Package for Stress Inversion Combining Solid Classic Methodology, a New Simplified User-Handling, and a Visualization Tool. Seismological Research Letters, 85(4), 896-904. doi: 10.1785/0220130189
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Martínez-Garzón, P., Ben-Zion, Y., Abolfathian, N., Kwiatek, G., & Bohnhoff, M. (2016). A refined methodology for stress inversions of earthquake focal mechanisms. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 121(12), 8666-8687. doi: 10.1002/2016jb013493