Benefits
- Avoid or mitigate risks of wellbore and drillstring shearing
- Minimize shearing and wellbore blockage risks to maximize production
- Avoid slip events that lead to earthquakes or migration of injection and production fluids to surface
Applications
- Reduction of wellbore shearing and lost circulation risks in wellbore stability analysis
- Reduction in breached seal and hydrocarbon eruption risk in Fault Seal analysis
- Reduction of earthquake risk in unconventional (shale/carbonate/basement) reservoirs
- Exploration resource size de-risking
- Estimation of hydrocarbon column height
Overview
Fault slips and leakage can cause serious well integrity challenges that translate to serious risks to your drilling, production, and injection operations.
GaffneyCline™ energy advisory brings a wealth of analysis expertise to help you understand your reservoir’s fault slip and leakage potential. Our experienced, multidisciplinary teams analyze data from a range of sources, including:
- 1D or 3D geomechanical models
- Estimates of stress path coefficient
- Estimates of fault friction and cohesion.
- 3D representation of fault planes from seismic.
- Supplementary fault interpretations from surface mapping, wellbore image data, and deep shear imaging.
This detailed analysis helps identify the slip/leakage risks and inform the right drilling and completion decisions. The output includes:
- Faults and fault segments most likely to slip based on their orientation.
- The critical pore pressure, injection pressure, depletion, and other calculated measurements that raise slip risks.
- The critical leakage points and maximum hydrocarbon column heights to minimize a leak.
- Optimal drilling trajectories to minimize the probability of the wellbore intersecting a high-risk fault.
- An understanding of shear-to-normal stress ratios along different parts of the wellbore, with lower ratios preferred to lower leak risks.
Ultimately, GaffneyCline energy advisory’s analysis and recommendations help you make better decisions regarding well placement and design, reservoir compartmentalization and drainage patterns, and enhanced recovery techniques.
Contact Baker Hughes today to learn how GaffneyCline energy advisory’s fault slip and leakage analysis can minimize wellbore integrity risks for more assured well performance.
Fault Stability/Slip Analysis. An example of risk of fault slip mapped on multiple fault surfaces near horizontal injection wells.
Fault Leakage and HC Column Height Analysis. A perspective view of leakage potential on a fault surface (white outlines show highest potential). Map view shows extent of observed leakage in the field, with nearby wells showing the orientation of SHmax.