OTC 19530

Geomechanics in Integrated Reservoir Modeling

A. (Tony) Settari, SPE, and Vikram Sen, SPE, University of Calgary

Copyright 2008, Offshore Technology Conference

This paper was prepared for presentation at the 2008 Offshore Technology Conference held in Houston, Texas, U.S.A., 5–8 May 2008.

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Abstract
This paper will discuss the current state of reservoir geomechanics and consider several areas of reservoir development and
management where geomechanical influences are important. In order to better integrate our workflows, coupled simulation is
often used to exchange parameters between individual modules that are typically run in standalone mode for reservoir flow
simulation, seismic modeling or geomechanical modeling. This paper will discuss coupled geomechanics and flow
simulation to illustrate several impacts of reservoir depletion (e.g. compaction and subsidence, stress arching in the
overburden and casing shear in the wells) and examine the connection between geomechanics and geophysics and areas
where coupling of these disciplines can benefit exploration and production. Two generic examples are presented - one
representing North Sea chalk reservoirs and the other representing deepwater turbidites.

Reservoir compaction and resulting subsidence are well known examples of geomechanical behavior. During depletion,
the reservoir pressures decrease and effective stresses increase. The rocks deform through a combination of elastic
(recoverable) and inelastic (permanent) strain, with plastic deformation occurring primarily as the stresses increase beyond
the compaction limit or "collapse" stress. The deformation creates a "compaction drive" (additional pressure support) in the
reservoir that can improve recovery. However, one must also deal with the undesirable effects - the environmental impact of
subsidence, possible fault reactivation, and integrity of wells crossing faults etc. – and geomechanics allows us to evaluate
these effects.

In other applications, incorporating geomechanics in the interpretation of repeat 4D seismic surveys improves our ability
to isolate and resolve the signatures of variations in fluid saturations. Finally, the primary concern in drilling and completion
engineering is wellbore stability during drilling and well integrity during the producing life of the well. The heterogeneity of
stress changes in layered reservoirs and overburden due to depletion-induced differential reservoir compaction poses specific
technical challenges e.g. casing shear deformation – and geomechanics plays an important role in modeling studies associated
with the evaluation of such challenges.

Scope of reservoir geomechanics

Under the umbrella of geomechanics, we can collect all problems that have some component of rock and soil mechanics or
fracture mechanics. Usually, these involve coupled solution of fluid flow and stress or deformation problems, often
accompanied by temperature changes, while accounting for the coupling physics between them. In other disciplines (such as
hazardous waste disposal) such processes are often referred to as THM (thermo-hydro-mechanical) problems. In the
petroleum industry, geomechanics is encountered in a variety of different situations, either on a single well basis or in a field-
wide setting, that cover drilling, completion, stimulation, production and reservoir engineering. Some examples follow:

- In drilling and completion engineering, the primary concern is with wellbore stability during drilling and well integrity
during the production life of the well. The former has been the traditional concern of geomechanics, while the latter
has been the focus of attention recently, notably in older fields. The stress changes in reservoir and overburden due to
depletion-induced reservoir compaction poses specific technical challenges, like the prediction of the changing
fracture gradient and its impact on the drilling window, often resulting in high costs for rigtime and drilling equipment.
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- Sand production is undesirable in conventional reservoirs (an operational problem), but it is the basis of the CHOPS
(Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand) method of producing heavy oil from unconsolidated reservoirs, in which sand
production enhances porosity and forms wormholes which in turn increase well productivity.

- Reservoir compaction and resulting subsidence are well known examples of geomechanical behavior. During
depletion, the reservoir pressure decreases and effective stresses increase. The rocks deform through a combination of
elastic (recoverable) and inelastic (permanent) strain, with plastic deformation occurring primarily as the stress
increases beyond the compaction limit or “collapse” stress. The ratio of inelastic to elastic strain increases with higher
stress, greater porosity, decreasing grain-to-grain contact and also depends on the stress path. The deformation creates
a “compaction drive” (additional pressure support) in the reservoir that can improve recovery. However, one must also
deal with the undesirable effects – the environmental impact of subsidence, possible fault reactivation,and integrity of
wells crossing faults etc.

- Even reservoirs that do not compact during depletion may exhibit strong, non-linear dependency of porosity and
permeability on effective stress. The typical examples include microfractured or macrofractured rock, low
permeability sands, coal etc. With decreasing pressure (due to production), effective stress increases and permeability
decreases, while in an injection path effective stress decreases and permeability increases. Conventional reservoir
models that treat permeability as a static field property will therefore overpredict well productivity, but underestimate
its injectivity. The simultaneous solution of geomechanics and fluid flow is necessary to provide realistic answers in
such scenarios.

- Fracture mechanics in rocks can be also considered a part of reservoir geomechanics, and it forms the theoretical basis
for conventional design and modeling of stimulation treatments. However, there is a large group of injection processes
at fracturing pressure that cannot be treated by the standard methods such as injection of “dirty” fluids (e.g., produced
water), drilling cuttings re-injection, gas fracturing and fracturing unconsolidated or naturally fractured media.

There are a number of other examples where geomechanics has been shown to improve the understanding of reservoir
behavior. Moreover, there is a strong link between geomechanics and the physics of seismic wave propagation in the
subsurface and a coupled approach to solving problems (for exploration, field development and reservoir management) can
vastly improve our understanding of reservoirs. Before discussing some case studies, we will present the concept of coupled
flow and deformation modeling in the following section.

Coupled geomechanical modeling

Coupled modeling involves simultaneous solution of the multiphase flow in porous media (reservoir simulation) and
deformation and stress solution in the much larger rock mass including the reservoir, overburden, side- and underburden
(geomechanical modeling). There are essentially two main couplings between reservoir flow and stress: pore volume
coupling, and flow properties coupling. Pore volume coupling is simply a requirement that the changes in porosity and bulk
volume in the reservoir, as calculated by the geomechanics, are honored in the reservoir simulator. Conventional (uncoupled)
reservoir models use a fixed (non-deforming) mesh and simple law of porosity as a function of pressure alone. In reality, the
reservoir and its surroundings deform in response to changes in pressure and temperature in the reservoir, but these changes
are themselves functions of the deformations – and hence the coupling. Flow properties coupling on the other hand is
primarily the response of the media permeability to its deformation expressed as either stress or strain change. Again, the
stress-induced changes of the permeability field change the pressure field, which in turn drives the stress and deformation
changes.

Coupled modeling as we know it today has evolved from various simplified attempts to include the above dependencies
in uncoupled reservoir simulators, such as “compaction” modeling techniques and the “pressure dependent permeability”
options available in many commercial simulators. But only in a coupled geomechanical-flow model can both be truly treated
more rigorously.

Coupled geomechanical-flow models can be either fully coupled (i.e., all unknowns solved simultaneously) or modular
(i.e. separate reservoir and geomechanics simulators that communicate during the solution by exchanging variables). In the
latter case, different coupling strategies can be employed, with consequences for running speed and accuracy. Majority of
coupled models use a conventional finite difference (FD) reservoir simulator coupled with a finite element (FEM) based
geomechanics module. Considering the proliferation and sophistication of the geomechanics codes available outside the
petroleum engineering discipline, and the complexity of reservoir characterization, fluid PVT and other aspects of the flow
modeling, the modular approach offers the best solution. Figure 1 shows the typical architecture of a modular coupled
system, which also accommodates other modules such as fracture mechanics.
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The research in coupling techniques continues, and in practice various levels of coupling are being used from “one-way”
coupling to “full” coupling, Note that the system described in Figure 1 is flexible as it can use different degrees of coupling
including the iterative approach first proposed in Settari and Mourits (1994). It is important to note that the iterative method,
when converged, is equivalent to full coupling, while it can include less “tight” coupling as special cases. Therefore one may
establish the minimum level of coupling necessary to solve a given problem and thus optimize computing cost.

The frequently asked question of the optimal degree of coupling does not have a universal answer. In general, processes
that are coupled mainly through the permeability variation with stress can be treated with less tight coupling (such as
recomputing the geomechanics and attendant permeability field at the end of each time step or after several time steps). This
includes reservoirs in which the fluid compressibility is much larger than the rock compressibility (e.g., gas reservoirs).
However, reservoirs that are liquid-filled, or are produced by thermal methods usually require fully coupled models, because
the pressure changes are strongly affected by porosity changes. One of the advantages of the modular coupling approach is
the opportunity to test the required degree of coupling by conducting multiple numerical experiments with the same software
toolkit.

Combining geomechanics and geophysics

The original intent of 4-D seismic was to image the movement of fluids in the reservoirs via the dependency of seismic
reflection amplitudes on velocities and density, which are affected by fluid saturation in the porous reservoir rocks. However,
the velocities also depend on elastic properties, and stress state of the reservoir and the overburden/sideburden. This presents
challenges as well as new possibilities.

Including the impact of stress changes during field life can change the interpretation of fluid saturations and accounting
for the geomechanical component can therefore improve the fidelity of a 4-D interpretation and improve estimates of the
saturation component.

Geophysics can be also used to collect important data necessary to build the geomechanical models. There is the
possibility of using seismic attributes to map the “geomechanical characterization” properties, such as initial stress
distribution, natural fracture density and orientation, moduli, anisotropy, etc. This is important because the data typically used
to populate geomechanical models often lack supporting measurements, in particular outside the reservoir.

Eventually, one can recognize that various material properties of the reservoir and overburden and their manifestations
on our measurements (made at the surface or in boreholes) are in fact inter-related. While our ability to predict the individual
sensitivities from first principles may be limited, the integrated analysis of data from a variety of sources has a much better
chance of constraining our predictions of the behaviour of a reservoir. Thus compaction and effective stress predictions from
geomechanical modeling studies can be used in well planning – and on the other hand, used to model seismic velocities
through rock physics – and that information can in turn be used to predict time-shifts in seismic traveltimes – which can then
be compared with field-measurements of time-lapse seismics. Thus, a coupled analysis constrained by history matching or
time-lapse data will allow a more robust estimate of the variation of fluid pressures and saturations within the reservoir. This
will lead to a better understanding of the depletion process and the patterns of connectivity and flow barriers.

Geomechanical modeling of compacting reservoirs

The concept of coupled geomechanical modeling has been investigated by many authors in the context of compacting
reservoirs. Recent work has examined both the physics of seismic velocity dependence as well as the interpretation of time-
shifts (in seismic data) to investigate the areal extent and magnitude of depletion. The common feature seems to be the use of
an empirical equation to relate time shift to changes in overall strain and velocity change above the reservoir. In a further step
toward realism, simple geomechanical models have been used to estimate the strain and stress changes. However, both the
flow and geomechanics are more complex (e.g., consider full multiphase flow) and can be strongly interlinked. The resulting
stress and strain distribution varies spatially and in time and therefore traveltime changes will vary locally and between
surveys. We will demonstrate the capability of coupled geomechanical modeling to capture this time and space variation
using two generic examples.

Modeling of a generic North-Sea chalk reservoir

The first example depicts a chalk reservoir (similar to Settari and Sen, 2007). Although the geometry of the system is a
simplified rectangular reservoir of constant thickness (see Figure 2), the case has many realistic features. The reservoir
consists of three chalk layers, with porosity of 35% in the outer layers and 40% in the middle. Realistic stress-strain behavior
with different chalk collapse (pre-consolidation) stress is defined for each porosity (for review of the modeling techniques,
see Settari and Walters, 2001). The flow model has a full 3-phase, thermal treatment (although here it is used as a 2-phase
oil-water system).
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The simulation study considers the reservoir under depletion for 25 years by producing at a constant rate, but the pressure
decline with time and reservoir deformations depend on the stress-strain relations and the properties of overburden and
sideburden. Because pressure decline in turn dictates the compaction and subsidence, the flow and deformations are strongly
coupled. Accordingly, the predictions were based on iterative coupling and actual simulations were run in an equivalent 2D
mode to minimize computation time.

As an example, Figure 3 presents the effect of the properties of the overburden on the change in mean effective stress
(final stress subtracted from initial stress). For simplicity, the same modulus was assumed for overburden and sideburden,
while the underburden was stiffer. The plots are comparable cross-sections through the 14-layer quarter element of symmetry
model shown in Figure 2 with axis of symmetry along the left edge of each panel in Figure 3. The reservoir zone is layers 8-
10. Although the actual model has layers of variable thickness, the layers are plotted in the figure with equal thickness to
bring out the changes around the reservoir. The differences between the 35% and 40% chalk are clearly visible and the chalk
with higher initial porosity undergoes greater compaction and change in effective stress.

The time evolution of the deformations and stresses at the left edge of the slice for intermediate overburden stiffness (E =
3.0E6 kPa) is shown in Figures 4 and 5. Figure 4 shows the vertical displacement at the surface (subsidence), and top and
bottom of the reservoir. Reservoir compaction is actually the difference between the latter two displacements (as opposed to
displacement only at the top of reservoir, as is often assumed). The difference can be important when the underburden is soft.
Figure 5 shows the development of mean effective stress changes with time. Analysis of the numerical results showed that
the stress changes within the reservoir are much larger than those in the overburden and (although not apparent from the
figure) the horizontal stress changes are larger than vertical ones. Also, the stress change is compressive at surface and tensile
just above the reservoir. As Figure 3 indicates, these stress changes will be different in every location (and will be affected by
heterogeneity in the overburden) and their magnitude will be particularly large around the boundaries of the reservoir. A
comparison of the cases in Figure 3 also illustrates “stress arching”, which plays an important role in the fluid-stress
coupling. A soft overburden (shown on far left) can follow the deformation of the reservoir and does not develop large
incremental stresses. However, a stiff overburden (shown on far right) will act as a stiff “bending plate” and will resist the
compaction of the reservoir. As a result the effective stress changes in the reservoir are smaller, while larger stress changes
develop in the overburden. The complexity of the behavior underscores the need for bringing more detailed geomechanical
modeling into time-lapse seismic interpretation than generally attempted at present. Obviously, the computational cost and
other computational issues (in particular gridding) are the price to pay for greater accuracy of the predictions (see Settari et
al., 2005, for a review of issues to be considered in applications to complex fields).

Results of such simulations can be used to specify deformation and stress changes in a 4-D (x-y-z-t) space to carry out
either forward seismic modeling or inversion of time-lapse data. However, for this to be credible, the geomechanical model
must be “history matched” to data, including measured subsidence and compaction.

Modeling of a generic offshore turbidite deposit

The second example depicts a turbidite deposit comprising alternating sand (pay) and shale (non-pay) layers – considered
in an offshore environment at water depths of 8000 feet. The sand layers have 35% porosity, net to gross ratio is 54% and
reservoir depth is about 7500 feet from the mudline. Figure 6 presents a schematic slice of the geomechanical model with the
salt sheets and reservoir pay zones highlighted in brighter colours. The simulation study involved several variations based on
these basic parameters. In the simplest case, the overburden, sideburden and underburden were assumed to be a single rock
type having identical geomechanical properties as the shale layers in the turbidite package while in the other cases, a salt
canopy was included in the overburden. A range of stiffness values were considered for the shale (linear elastic model with E
= 4.13E5 kPa – 5.51E5 kPa) and salt (linear elastic model with E = 3E6 kPa – 31E6 kPa). In these studies, the salt was
assumed to be a stiffer material compared to surrounding sediments – especially considering the short loading intervals and
ignoring long term creep. As discussed in the previous section, stress-strain relationships were individually specified for each
rock type. Two wells were placed – one through the salt canopy and the other through a continuous sedimentary overburden.
A depletion scenario over 20 years was simulated through coupled flow and geomechanical modeling.

Some of the results from this study are depicted in Figures 7 and 8. These figures show vertical displacement of each cell
in the geomechanical model (seen in a vertical cross sectional view) – which is a measure of the compaction, subsidence or
uplift caused by depletion related deformation of the overburden, sideburden, underburden and the reservoir. The “hot”
colours (i.e. yellow to red) represent uplift or positive vertical displacement and the “cold” colours (i.e. green to violet)
represent subsidence or negative vertical displacement. All panels in the two figures are plotted on a common colour scale
which represents displacements over a range of -18 feet to 16 feet. As evident from these plots of vertical displacement, the
relative geomechanical strengths of the material in the overburden, pay zones and salt sheets have a significant impact on the
stress and deformation heterogeneity that develop due to depletion induced pressure changes. Secondary manifestations in
the form of casing buckling, well bore damage and subsidence at facilities can adversely impact production over the lifetime
of a field – in the absence of front end evaluations and mitigation planning.
OTC 19530 5

Conclusion
The above discussion highlights the need to solve all three problems (reservoir flow, geomechanics and rock physics or
seismic modeling) simultaneously. This in turn provides new possibilities for using the reservoir, geomechanical or seismic
data to reduce the uncertainty of modeling studies. For example, in a situation where coupled reservoir and geomechanical
modeling has been history matched to production field data, but direct field measurement of subsidence/compaction data are
missing, seismic modeling may be used to obtain compaction estimates – and if they are found to be different from the results
of the geomechanics model, a recalibration or reconciliation of the models must follow. In a different scenario, for a field
with a well calibrated shared earth model, the results from a coupled geomechanics and flow modeling study can be fed into
forward seismic modeling (via rock physics) to either ‘design” the periodicity for shooting 4-D surveys, or compared with
data from actual 4D surveys. In that case, any mismatch between the modeled seismic and field data may be used to further
improve the fidelity of the reservoir description.

Our recent experiences have shown that an iterative process within this framework (combining coupled geomechanics-
flow modeling and seismic) can demonstrate deficiencies in both the geomechanical modeling and the seismic interpretation
and active research is being currently conducted to further investigate various concepts of coupled modeling.

Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge the Alberta Ingenuity Fund and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of
Canada (NSERC) for supporting their research.

References
Settari, A, and Mourits, F.M, (1994): “Coupling of Geomechanics and Reservoir Simulation Models”, Computer Methods and Advances in
Geomechanics, Siriwardene and Zaman (eds.), Balkema, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 3, 2151-2158.
Settari, A., and Sen, V., (2007): “The Role of Geomechanics in Integrated Reservoir Modeling”, The Leading Edge (SEG), 26(5), 622-627.
Settari, A., and Walters, D.A., (2001): “Advances in Coupled Geomechanical and Reservoir Modeling with Applications to Reservoir
Compactions”, SPE Journal, 6(3), 334-342.

Figures

Conventional Flow
Simulator

Geomechanics Module
( basic features : stress, strain and deformation modeling )

Formation Stress and Static Propagating Other Features

Damage Fractures Fractures

Figure 1 : Schematic architecture of a coupled system comprising a conventional flow simulator and a multi-purpose
geomechanics workbench including add-on features for modeling formation damage (e.g. produced water re-injection), stress-
sensitive fracture systems and hydraulic fracturing. The linkage between the fluid flow and geomechanics modules can be full,
iterative, explicit or one-way coupled (Settari and Sen, 2007).
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Figure 2 : Idealized coupled geomechanical model (1/4 element of symmetry). The reservoir zone is shown in color in the figure on
left and a producer-well is assumed along the front-facing edge. The reservoir zone is located at a depth of 3000 m from the top of
the geomechanical model and the underburden is 1000 m thick. The reservoir zone itself comprises three layers, each 100 m thick.
Note the grid refinement shown around the well location. The figure (right) shows the variation of vertical deformation with depth as
a consequence of compaction and subsidence following depletion for 25 years. This is an idealized model based on a North Sea
chalk reservoir.

Figure 3 : Mean effective stress change (kPa) after 25 years of depletion for three different overburden stiffness (E in kPa). These
snapshots were taken for an equivalent 2D version of the geomechanical model shown in Figure 2 (which includes the reservoir
zone between layers 8-10). The vertical axis in the above figure represents layer sequence number, and layer thickness has been
scaled to be equal for all layers to emphasize the stress changes. The color bar ranges from 800-12000 kPa. See Figure 2 for a
realistic depiction of the relative thickness of different layers.
OTC 19530 7

0
vertical displacement (m)

-1

-2

-3

-4 model top (surface)

reservoir top
-5 reservoir bottom

-6
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000
time (days)

Figure 4 : Vertical deformations as a function of time. The three curves depict subsidence at the surface and compaction at the top
and base of the 3-layered reservoir zone.

Figure 5 : Mean effective stress changes (final subtracted from initial, in kPa) as a function of time. Layer 1 is the uppermost layer
in the geomechanical model, while layer 7 is the first layer above the three-layered reservoir zone, and layer 9 is in the middle of the
reservoir. Stresses are computed at the axis of ¼ symmentry and at the centers of the layers referenced above.
8 OTC 19530

Figure 6 : Schematic diagram showing a slice through the generic turbidite reservoir model. The pay zones are being tapped
through two wells, one of which passes through the salt canopy. The overburden, sideburden and underburden are assumed to be
the same material as the shales interleaving the payzones in the reservoir. The reservoir zones are located at an approximate depth
of 7500 feet from the top of the geomechanical grid (shown above) which corresponds to the seafloor (water depth=8000 feet).

Figure 7 : Slices through the geomechanical model showing the spatial distribution of vertical displacement in each cell after a
simulated depletion for 20 years. The slice is oriented along the one shown in Figure 6. The top panel represents a case without
any salt canopy in the overburden. The bottom panel corresponds to a case having a salt canopy with E (modulus) = 3E6 kPa. The
shales have E (modulus) = 4.13E5 kPa. The darker (cold) colors represent (-) subsidence while the lighter (hot) colors represent (+)
uplift. A single color scheme depicting vertical displacements in the range (-18, +16) feet has been used for figures 7 and 8.
OTC 19530 9

Figure 8 : Slices through the geomechanical model showing the spatial distribution of vertical displacement in each cell after a
simulated depletion for 20 years. The slice is oriented along the ones shown in Figures 6 and 7. Both panels represent cases with
salt canopy in the overburden. For the top panel, shale E = 4.13E5 kPa and salt E = 31E6 kPa. For the bottom panel, shale E =
5.51E5 kPa and salt E = 31E6 kPa. The darker (cold) colors represent (-) subsidence while the lighter (hot) colors represent (+) uplift.
A single color scheme depicting vertical displacements in the range (-18, +16) feet has been used for figures 7 and 8.