Geomechanical aspects of reservoir thermal alteration: A literature review

Abstract

This paper reviews the impact of the geo-temperature alteration in applications relevant to coupled reservoir geomechanics. Some important geomechanical aspects of the reservoir thermal alteration are highlighted in operations such as drilling, waterflooding, hydraulic fracturing, thermal EOR, geothermal energy exploitation, CO2 storage, and nuclear waste disposal. Additionally, this document presents a review of both, experimental and theoretical evidence, which allows anticipating that changes in temperature may have a significant effect not only on the production and development of hydrocarbon reservoirs, but also, on the environmental aspects involved in these operations. As could be reviewed, there are still several gaps in the literature regarding theoretical modeling and experimental studies, as well as, the lack of correlation between field observations with theoretical and experimental results.