RESERVOIR GEOMECHANICS (COMPACTION)
1. Feasible to estimate ‘elastic skeletal specific storage’ (elastic deformations remain completely recoverable when the reservoir pressure returns to pre-development value) and ‘inelastic skeletal specific storage’ (inelastic deformation which remain completely irrecoverable irrespective of the reservoir pressure condition) for a petroleum reservoir using Terzhagi’s principle – in order to develop ‘reliable land subsidence predictions’ - for various field conditions?
2. Even, if we assume that the ‘formation brine’ remains ‘incompressible’ relative to the ‘reservoir system compressibility’, how do we consider the ‘compressibility of oil’ towards estimating the ‘storage coefficient’?
Whether a simple relation between ‘reservoir rock compressibility’ and the ‘change in potentiometric head’ would remain sufficient towards estimating the storage coefficient?
3. Do we (in general) maintain - the continuous decline of potentiometric heads - from the day, the production commences?
4. Do we also record the deformation rate (mm/year) for every year - from the year of production; with the details of the largest cumulative subsidence?
5. Stress-stain relationship associated with a petroleum reservoir: which one of the following suits the best?
(a) having an elastic behavior with residual deformation remaining low; and thereby leading to a stress-strain curve with a nearly single slope, when the reservoir gets subjected to a repeated loading and unloading phases associated with the overlying formation?
(b) stress-strain relationship having an elastic-inelastic deformation with a large residual deformation with a number of hysteresis loop?
(c) stress-strain relationship having an inelastic deformation with a large residual deformation in the absence of hysteresis loop?
6. Whether the consolidation of ‘reservoir thickness’ always growth with depth – resulting from the increasing load of overlying formation?
7. When could we expect this scenario in a petroleum reservoir, whereby ‘the effective stress getting increased beyond the upper limit, the reservoir rock system has experienced (exceeding the pre-consolidation stress)’; and thereby, leading to structural restructuring of the reservoir pore geometry - which essentially produces a relatively large irrecoverable deformation?
8. How exactly the total storage loss resulting from an irrecoverable inelastic deformation (apart from its contribution from a recoverable elastic deformation) would affect the waterflooding scenario?
Feasible to deduce the loss of pore volume per unit area resulting from inelastic deformation - which will provide a better control over reservoir compaction?
9. Feasible to develop a sustainable hydrocarbon production practice as a function of elastic and inelastic deformations associated with a petroleum reservoir?
10. Ongoing compaction with depleting reservoir pressure upon hydrocarbon production, can we simply consider the elastic skeletal storage to remain as a constant with time, while the inelastic skeletal storage to have a decreasing trend with time that irreversibly reduces the reservoir pore volume?
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