Essential Ingredients

trap
seal

reservoir

k
source roc

5. Seals & Pressures 1

 Seals and Pressures
Seals are thick, laterally continuous ductile rocks which
fluids can enter and pass through with difficulty only
The pore throats are too small for hydrocarbons to
enter these rocks unless the buoyancy pressure
overcomes this

•  Seals are a major control on retained hydrocarbons

(obviously!)
•  Many seals leak, constantly or intermittently
•  Multiple mechanisms of seal leakage
•  Like everything else, it is a dynamic process

5. Seals & Pressures 2

 Seal Facts
•  Seal quality / efficiency depends on the lithology:
–  Excellent: salt, ductile clay
–  Good: anhydrite, ductile clay, shale
–  Fair: marl, shale, siltstone
–  Poor: argillaceous limestone, siltstone, argillaceous sandstone
•  Seal quality / efficiency depends also on continuity
•  Regional seals provide a continuous cover to widespread reservoir
formations and migration loss is limited
•  Intraformational seals are composed of local seal facies; these tend to
be associated with stacked columns
•  Seal Quality depends on the degree of faulting and fracturing
•  Faults and fractures may provide leak paths for hydrocarbons
•  When fault throw is more than seal thickness, the seal may be breached
•  Seal quality / efficiency depends on ductility
•  A function of lithology, temperature & pressure. From most ductile to most
brittle: Salt – anhydrite – kerogen-rich shales – silty shales – carbonate
mudstone - chert
•  Seal thickness appears to be not so critical, but thicker seals are less
easily broken
5. Seals & Pressures 3
 When do Seals Fail?
•  When capillary entry pressure >
buoyancy pressure of HC column
•  Controlled by largest interconnected
pore throat system
•  Faults an fractures may provide leak
path
•  Importance of seal thickness?

•  When overpressures > seal

strength
•  Controlled by:
•  Degree of overpressures
•  Minimum effective stress
•  Tensile seal strength
•  Rheology of seal is important
•  Brittle or ductile
5. Seals & Pressures 4
 Fault Seals may seal by:
•  Juxtaposition
•  When a reservoir is juxtaposed with a
sealing lithology, and the fault plane
itself is not a leak path

•  Clay smear – shale gauge

•  When relatively soft sediments are
faulted, clay may enter the fault plane
•  E.g. in syn-sedimentary faulted
clastics, such as in deltaic settings

•  Fault gauge - cataclasis

•  In deeper buried sequences a fault
gauge may develop consisting of
shale and cataclastic material
•  digenesis of the gauge may
enhance the sealing capacity of
the fault
5. Seals & Pressures 5
 Sealing through juxta-position

Note the difference in leakage across the faultplane Note the difference in leakage point between
depending on simple normal faulting (left), or the simple fault (left) and the added
rotation of the hanging-wall block (right). complexity of a subsidiary fault (right).

After Friedman & Nummedal, 2003)

5. Seals & Pressures 6

 Seal CF vs Column Prediction
Top seal CF is about the “crestal regions”
Will (some) hydrocarbons be retained at the crest?

Leak points below the crest affect the volume

Spill - point (column prediction) ; not the POS

5. Seals & Pressures 7

 Membrane (Capillary) Seals
Capillary entry pressure
A function of pore throat diameter
A membrane (capillary) seal will
leak when the upwards directed
buoyancy force exceeds the
capillary entry pressure.
The largest interconnected pore
Seal throat system determines whether
a membrane seal leaks or not

Capillary Entry Pressure

Pd = 2ϒcosθ/R
Reservoir Pd = Capillary entry pressure
Oil ϒ = hc-water interfacial tension
θ = inverse measure of wettability
Buoyancy pressure R = radius of largest pore throats
oil and gas are Buoyancy
lighter than water wettability
depth

HC
HC gradient
column
water
gradient θ

5. Seals & Pressures 8

 Differential Leakage of Oil & Gas

pressure
Differential pressure
at top of gas column

Differential pressure

depth
at top of oil column
HC
column oil
gradient
gas
gradient
water
gradient

Influence of differential leakage across faults caused by variations in

juxtaposed seal rock properties (assuming unlimited oil and gas charge).
Gas is under higher pressure than oil and may leak preferentially
From Shell

5. Seals & Pressures 9

 Vertical Charge, Fill/Spill and Leakage
Hydrocarbons
cascade through the
system from bottom
to top, and are
eventually lost to the
surface

Main mechanisms
are:
•  Spillage
•  Hydraulic failure
•  Capillary entry
•  Diffusional loss

5. Seals & Pressures 10

 Over- and Underpressures Require Seals

5. Seals & Pressures 11

 Subsurface Pressures
•  Are normally hydrostatic (1.03bar/10m)
•  May be underpressured or overpressured, with a
maximum at the lithostatic pressure (2.3bar/10m)
•  Overpressure is important both in trapping and to
drilling of wells. It results when formation fluids
cannot escape due to:
–  Too rapid burial of rocks with limited permeability, eg in deltas
–  Generation and accumulation of petroleum (oil or gas)
–  Where rocks lie below very effective seals like salt
•  Understanding overpressure is very important in
well design
–  Ensuring the drilling fluid (“mud”) is sufficient to hold down any
pressures, but not enough to break the formation
–  Measured by “leak-off tests” and seismic velocities
–  Pressures generally increase with depth,

5. Seals & Pressures 12

 Idealised Pressure / Depth Plot
The Hydrostatic pressure
gradient is the pressure exerted
by a continuous column of water
extending to the surface or sea-
bed. The slop of the gradient
depends on the salinity of the
formation water.
The lithostatic pressure
gradient is the pressure exerted
by the weight of the overlying
sediments. The gradient is based
on integrated densities of rocks
from surface (sea-bed) to depth.

13
5. Seals & Pressures
 Sub-surface Pressures

Remember the Chilean mineworkers?

Trapped in a mine at a depth of 700 m
All they noticed was the elevated
temperature as a result of the normal
temperature gradient of ± 3 °C / 100m
700 m

What would they feel if the roof of the

cavern would collapse?

5. Seals & Pressures 14

 Sub-surface Pressures

What would they feel if the mine would

be flooded by water, all the way to the
surface?
700 m

5. Seals & Pressures 15

 Sub-surface Pressures

What would they feel if everything above

them would collapse?
700 m

5. Seals & Pressures 16

 Fluid Gradients and Overpressures
•  No matter how high the overpressures, the slope of
fluid (or gas) gradients will not change
•  An overpressured gradient will be parallel to the
non-overpressured gradient
•  The slope of the gradient is determined by the
weight of the fluid
•  Water gradients are ±1.03 bar/10 m
•  Lithostatic gradient is ±2.3 bar/10 m
•  Oil gradients are between of 0.78 to 0.93 bar/10m
•  Gas gradients are between 0.23 and 0.32 bar/10m

5. Seals & Pressures 17

 Pressures in a Gas-Oil Accumulation

X-section through trap with gas and oil fill Pressure-depth plot

pressures

In hydrocarbon accumulations the pressure above the Hydrocarbon-

Water-Contact will be higher than the aquifer pressures at the same
depth, reaching a maximum at the culmination of the trap
18
5. Seals & Pressures
 Sealing Faults and Overpressures

Sealing faults (usually with clay smear) may hold back high pore
pressures (seen here expressed in mud-weight). Such faults can hold
stacked accumulations of oil and gas in footwall traps.
5. Seals & Pressures From: AAPG Mem 67, p 53 19
 Leakiness
The biggest impacts on seals are :
•  Presence of salt (salt easily “anneals” as a seal – salt is a very
effective long term seal)
•  Tectonic activity (faulting, salt piercement) makes for very leaky
systems
The value of present-day charge
•  Because of the leaky nature of almost all traps and seals, basins
with ongoing (present-day) charge are generally most prospective
Old charge is usually only preserved in basins:
•  With salt as seal, and/or
•  In basins that have been tectonically quiescent since charge time

5. Seals & Pressures 20

 Key Messages
•  The best seals are salt and marine shales
•  Many other lithologies may also be sealing, but most
seals leak slowly
•  Thickness and good lateral continuity help the sealing
quality
•  Faults may be sealing due to:
–  Clay smear
–  Shale gauge (fault gauge)
–  Cataclasis
–  Diagenesis
•  Seals may fail due to hydraulic failure, or because the
capillary entry pressure is exceeded
•  Faults and fractures are possible leak paths
–  Late faulting adds to the risk
5. Seals & Pressures 21
 Traps and Overpressures
0.5 - - 0.5

1.0 - - 1.0

Very high (‘hard’)

1.5 - overpressures, may - 1.5

cause traps to fail

catastrophically
2.0 - - 2.0

2.5 - - 2.5

3.0 -
B20 Central Luconia - 3.0
5 km
5. Seals & Pressures 14. Pressures22
&
Overpressures
 Overpressures
Overpressure in the subsurface is caused by the inability of pore fluids to
escape because of the sealing nature of the surrounding lithologies
(evaporites, shales, tight sandstones, etc).
In areas of rapid sedimentation the rate of burial of the stratigraphic layer
may be so great that the escape of pore fluids is too slow to maintain
hydrostatic pressure.

Implications
When drilling through overpressured sediments,
an uncontrollable inflow of pore fluids into the
well bore may result in a blowout with possibly
disastrous consequences.
Overpressured sediments may exhibit better porosity than would be
predicted from their depth, and they may make attractive hydrocarbon
reservoirs.
5. Seals & Pressures
 Overpressures
Overpressures are caused by:
•  Reduction of the pore volume
–  Compaction, in particular in Tertiary deltas with rapid burial
–  Mineral transformation (diagenesis)
–  Tectonics
•  Increasing volume of the pore fill
–  Hydrocarbon generation
–  Aquathermal expansion
–  (Osmosis)
Pressures can return to a normal hydrostatic
level through dewatering, either vertically or
laterally
•  Permeability is the key parameter; either of the
surrounding sediments, and of the reservoir itself
•  Also faults may provide dewatering routes
5. Seals & Pressures
 Traps and Overpressures

•  With very high (‘hard’) overpressures, seal

strength may be exceeded causing traps to fail
catastrophically
•  Seal strength is routinely being
measured during the drilling of wells
by performing a Leak-Off-Test (LOT)

•  The pressure at which the formations

starts to fail is called the Leak-Off-
Pressure (LOP)

5. Seals & Pressures

 Leak-Off Test
Pressure

Formation break-down pressure

leak-off (FBP)
Pressure
(LOP)

Volume, Time
5. Seals & Pressures
 Leak-Off Pressures in the Dutch Subsurface

Lower Bound of
Leak-off pressures

Note how with increasing depth the lower envelope (lower bound) of the
leak-off pressures comes closer to the lithostatic gradient
5. Seals & Pressures
 Lower Bound (of LOPs)

Reservoir pressures (RFT)

Leak-off pressures (LOP)

•  When all LOPs are plotted against depth, the ‘Lower Bound’ of all LOPs
indicates the seal strength
•  And, normally, reservoir pressures do not exceed the ‘Lower Bound’
5. Seals & Pressures
 Protected Trap Concept
Three prospects Pressure
in one pressure cell
Lower Bound
of Leak-off pressures
A
B

Depth
C

B If traps are connected by a continuous

C: Full aquifer, seal failure will occur first in
to spill the shallowest trap.
C Deeper accumulations are “protected”,
A: Dry as the maximum aquifer pressure is
Pressure valve constrained by the shallowest point of
B: Underfilled for the cell the pressure cell.
Limited margin
5. Seals & Pressures
 Overpressures
•  Understanding the distribution of pressures in
the subsurface is extremely important for oil and
gas exploration and development
–  High overpressures may cause very serious drilling
hazards
–  Overpressures may cause traps to be breached (leak)
–  Overpressure may constrain the maximum column
length in traps
–  Pressures are an excellent tool to prove or disprove
connectivity of a reservoir between well locations

•  Understanding the distribution of overpressures

in the subsurface is an very important element
for understanding the subsurface

5. Seals & Pressures