Leonardo Guimaraes

Federal University of Pernambuco

Optimal reservoir management incorporating geomechanics

The process of optimizing oil reservoir management is aided by the use of flow simulators, which normally do not consider geomechanical phenomena in the process. The stress-strain behavior of reservoir rocks is of great importance for understanding and predicting the variation of properties such as porosity and permeability resulting from rock deformation, as well as the consideration of geomechanical phenomena at the well and reservoir scales that have an impact on the production of the field under consideration. Geomechanical coupling incorporates new constraints to the management optimization problem, which depend on displacements, strains and stresses at selected points of the reservoir and cap rocks. As a result, phenomena such as reactivation of geological faults, fracturing of cap rock, excessive compaction of the reservoir and subsidence can be detected and limited during the optimization process, which will take into account equiprobable scenarios to model uncertainties.