Analysis of the hydromechanical behavior of fault zones in petroleum reservoirs

摘要

Aiming to increase hydrocarbon production, the oil industry has developed recovery methodsrnwhose purpose is to get more production. Thus, several problems may be encountered when making use ofrnthese techniques, mainly the conventional one. In addition, consideration of geological structures in reservoirrnengineering, such as fault zones, has fundamental character for determining realistic response for the productionrnof hydrocarbons. In the case of faults zones, its consideration in the model has significant importance currently,rnespecially with regard to the possibility of reactivation and possible loss of tightness of the reservoir. Thus,rnthe aim of this study was assess reservoir models with a fault zone using partially coupled hydro-mechanicalrnsimulations. The methodology considers a fault zone whose behavior is given by the Mohr-Coulomb yieldrncriterion. The plasticity model showed consistent results with the process of reactivation for the models. Thus,rnfor the case where the objective is to determine the maximum flow rate of injection as well as its spatialrnconfigurations aimed at maintaining the field production, it is possible to establish the flow rate that may resultrnin the initiation of the fault reactivation. Furthermore, the effect of surrounding rocks had a great influence inrnthe time required to initiate the process of reactivation. As a general conclusion, it is stated that the considerationrnof fault zones in reservoirs, as well as surrounding rocks, must be taken into account to obtain more accuraternresponse to the field behavior.