Abstract
In this paper, the compression drive mechanism, which can be considered as the most related oil drive mechanism with the reservoir geomechanical properties, has been investigated. The constant total vertical stress on the reservoir and uniaxial reservoir compaction with zero lateral strain are two main assumptions in the conventional reservoir compaction modeling. These assumptions are not considering the stress arching, which leads to a reduction in the total vertical stress and also affects the distribution of vertical and horizontal stresses. In this paper, it was tried to investigate the effects of three keys elastic parameters, including Young's modulus, Poisson’s ratio, and Biot coefficient on the reservoirs stress paths and compaction drive mechanism using numerical modeling with ABAQUS software. Based on the modeling results the reservoirs stress paths is very different from simplifying assumption in uniaxial compaction models while the total compaction of reservoir obtained using numerical modeling and uniaxial model in some cases can be equal. Also, among the three geomechanical parameters, the ratio of Young's modulus of the reservoir and surrounding rocks has a significant effect on the reservoir stress paths and compaction. The results of modeling indicate when a reservoir rock is softer than its surrounding environment, due to the arching occurrence, the total vertical stress applied to the reservoir rock reduced even to half of the initial vertical stress, which leads to the oil recovery by the compression drive mechanism will be less than 50% of the predicted value.
Highlights
The compaction of reservoir rock is a known mechanism for the extraction of oil content of the rock pores
The interesting point about the reservoir stress paths is that none of them follows the existing relationships based on the uniaxial compression model (γv ≠ 0 and γh≠(1-2ν)/(1-ν) γ), while the average stress path showed a good matching with its value obtained from Equation 3
6- Conclusion In this paper, the effect of stress arching on reservoir compaction and compaction drive mechanism was investigated
Summary
The compaction of reservoir rock is a known mechanism for the extraction of oil content of the rock pores. A reduction in total stresses by reducing the pore pressure of the reservoir is indicated in periodic measurements of in situ stresses in different oil fields (Asaei et al 2018) This decrease is due to stress arching, as a result of which a part of the vertical stress induced from the overburden weight is transmitted to the side burden of the reservoir (Gao and Gray 2020; Sayers and Schutjens 2007). Numerous studies have been conducted on the stress arching in the last decade, most of which have investigated the effect of this aspect on the stress state in the reservoir, seismic activity by generation or reactivation of faults, and changing the permeability of the reservoir rock (Khan et al 2000; Mulders 2003; Orlic and Wassing 2013; Peng et al 2020; Soltanzadeh and Hawkes 2008). The typical participations of each drive mechanism in oil production are shown in Table 1 (Sanni 2018)
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