Leakage of CO₂ saturated fluid along wellbores has critical implications for the feasibility of geologic CO₂ storage. Wells, which are ubiquitous in locations ideal for CO₂ storage, develop leaks (e.g. fractures) for many reasons and at different points in their age. Small leaks pose the most significant risk to geological CO₂ sequestration because they are difficult to detect and provide a direct pathway through which fluid can escape the storage formation. This dissertation shows that due to complex coupling between reaction and flow, leaking wells will tend to self-seal via secondary precipitation of calcium carbonate in the open pathway. Residence time, fluid reactivity, and initial fracture aperture all play a key role in determining the time required to seal the leakage pathway. To test the self-sealing hypothesis, laboratory experiments were conducted to inject reactive fluids into naturally fractured cement. Restriction of the leakage pathway, i.e., the fracture, was inferred from the relationship between flow rate and pressure differential. Precipitation was observed in both constant flow rate and constant pressure differential experiments. In the former precipitation resulted in an increasing pressure differential, while precipitation caused a decrease in flow rate in the latter. Analysis by electron microprobe and x-ray diffraction, and corroborated with effluent chemical analysis, showed that the reacted channel was depleted in calcium and enriched in silicon relative to the original material. The remaining silicon rich material prevents widening of the reacted channel and development a self-enhancing (e.g. wormhole) behavior. Self-limiting behavior is caused by calcium mixing with carbonate ions in high pH slow flow regions where local residence time is large and calcium carbonate is insoluble. Secondary precipitation initially develops next to the reacted channel and then across the fracture surface and is the source of pathway restriction and the self-sealing behavior. Results from the experiments are used to develop a simple analytical model to forecast well scale leakage. Future work is needed to test a broader range of experimental conditions (e.g. brine salinity, cement formulations, cement-earth interface, effect of CO₂ saturation, pressure, and temperature), to improve our understanding of both the fundamental behavior and the leakage model. / text

Unconventional oil and gas, which is of major interest in petroleum industry, often occur in reservoirs with transversely isotropic rock properties such as shales. Overlooking transverse isotropy may result in deviation in stress distribution around wellbore and inaccurate estimation of fracture initiation pressure which may jeopardize safe drilling and efficient fracturing treatment. In this work, to help understand the behavior of transversely isotropic reservoirs during drilling and fracturing, the principle of generalized plane-strain finite element formulation of anisotropic poroelastic problems is explained and a finite element model is developed from a plane-strain isotropic poroelastic model. Two numerical examples are simulated and the finite element results are compared with a closed form solution and another FE program. The validity of the developed finite element model is demonstrated. Using the validated finite element model, sensitivity analysis is carried out to evaluate the effects of transverse isotropy ratios, well azimuth, and rock bedding dip on pore pressure and stress distribution around a horizontal well. The results show that their effect cannot be neglected. The short term pore pressure distribution is sensitive to Young’ modulus ratio, while the long term pore pressure distribution is only sensitive to permeability ratio. The total stress distribution generally is not sensitive to transverse isotropy ratios. The effective stress and fracture initiation are very sensitive to Young’ modulus ratio. As the well rotates from minimum horizontal in-situ stress to maximum horizontal in-situ stress, the pore pressure and stress distributions tend to be more unevenly distributed around the wellbore, making the wellbore easier to fracture. The pore pressure and stress distributions tend to "rotate" in correspondence with the rock bedding plane. The fracture initiation potential and position will alter when rock bedding orientation varies.

[pt] Testes de formação são normalmente realizados para determinar as propriedades rochosas do reservatório e os dados obtidos costumam ser interpretados com base no pressuposto que o reservatório é homogêneo na direção vertical e descrito por um modelo uni dimensional. No entanto, muitos reservatórios são compostos por diversas camadas que possuem características diferentes. Os poços de produção nesses reservatórios podem receber óleo de mais de uma camada. Em um sistema de reservatório estratificado, o comportamento da pressão e da temperatura não é necessariamente o mesmo de um sistema em camada única e raramente revela as mesmas propriedades médias de todo o sistema. Prever as características das camadas individuais é importante para descrever adequadamente o reservatório e melhorar o gerenciamento da produção. Este trabalho apresenta um modelo numérico, transiente-térmico para um sistema acoplado poço - reservatório 2D, levando-se em consideração efeitos Joule-Thompson responsáveis pelo aquecimento / resfriamento do fluido, expansão/compressão adiabática, além de efeitos de condução e convecção para o poço e o reservatório em um escoamento monofásico. A análise bidimensional do reservatório permite que se simule zonas de estratificação e barreiras. O modelo permite fluxo através de camadas adjascentes com propriedades de rocha diferentes. Pressão e temperatura a uma certa posição no poço produtor são avaliadas ao longo do tempo. Resultados mostram que a análise do transiente de pressão (PTA) e a análise do transiente de temperatura (TTA) podem ser utilizadas para caracterizar diferentes configurações de um reservatório estratificado. / [en] Well formation tests are usually performed to determine rock properties of a reservoir and the obtained data has often been interpreted based on an assumption that the reservoir is homogeneous in the vertical direction and described by a 1-D model. However, many reservoirs are found to be composed of different number of layers that have different characteristics. Production wells in such reservoirs may receive oil from more than one layer. In stratified reservoir system, the pressure and temperature behavior are not necessarily the same as in single layered system, and rarely reveals the same average properties of the entire system. The prediction of the characteristics of the individual layers is important to describe properly the reservoir and improve production management. This work presents a numerical transient-thermal model for a coupled wellbore/2D-reservoir considering Joule-Thompson heating/cooling, adiabatic fluid expansion/compression, conduction and convection effects for both wellbore and reservoir for a single-phase fluid flow. The two-dimensional reservoir model allows the analysis of stratified zones and barriers. The model allows cross flow between the adjacent layers with different rock properties.Wellbore temperature and pressure at a certain gauge depth are evaluated along the time. Results show how pressure transient analysis (PTA) and temperature transient analysis (TTA) can be used to characterize different configuration of stratified reservoirs.

[pt] Com o aumento do preço do barril de petróleo nos anos 2000 e acrescente demanda por essa commoditie, tornou-se mais atrativa a exploração de petróleo em águas profundas, favorecendo oportunidades em plays subsal e pré-sal em diversas áreas do mundo. Como consequência desta tendência, os desafios da indústria de petróleo se tornaram cada vez maiores. Um dos desafios na perfuração de poços em evaporitos é minimizar a fluência deste tipo de rocha, a qual pode fechar o poço ou colapsar um revestimento ao longo do tempo. Além disso, cenários geológicos com presença de estruturas de sal podem ocasionar problemas de instabilidade mecânica, também, durante a perfuração de poços nas rochas adjacentes ao sal. Os principais problemas associados a esse cenário são causados pela mudança em magnitude e a rotação das tensões principais em torno dessas estruturas salinas, principalmente nas interfaces entre o sal e as rochas adjacentes, coloquialmente denominada de rubble zones. O presente trabalho propõe uma avaliação geomecânica do estado de tensões em região subsal onde foi constatada a instabilidade mecânica durante a perfuração de um poço. Essa avaliação foi feita a partir de simulações numéricas do estado plano de deformação de uma seção geológica 2D da área, onde foi imposto um comportamento viscoplástico para os evaporitos; e elastoplástico com critérios de plasticidade CamClay e MohrCoulomb para região abaixo do sal. Como resultado serão discutidas as trajetórias de tensão obtidas na simulação com os dois tipos de materiais elastoplásticos, evidenciando uma abordagem metodológica para subsidiar a previsão da janela de estabilidade de poços em regiões com estruturas de sal alóctone, uma vez que as tensões in situ nessas regiões se encontram significativamente alteradas, sendo impossível predizer com acurácia a magnitude dessas tensões a partir de modelos analíticos convencionais. Uma melhor previsão das tensões in situ se traduz em uma melhor previsão da janela operacional, com consequente diminuição os riscos operacionais e melhoria na segurança e economicidade dos projetos de poços. / [en] The rise in the price of a barrel of oil in the 2000s and the increasing demand for this commodity, deepwater oil exploration became more attractive, favoring opportunities in subsalt and pre-salt plays in several areas of the world. As a consequence of this trend, the challenges of the oil industry have become ever greater. One of the challenges in drilling wells in evaporites is to minimize the creep to avoid the well collapse. In addition geological scenarios with the presence of salt structures can cause problems of mechanical instability also during drilling of wells in the rocks adjacent to the salt. The main problems associated with this scenario are caused by the change in magnitude and the rotation of the principal stresses around these salt structures, mainly at the interfaces between the salt and the adjacent rocks, colloquially called rubble zones. The present work proposes a geomechanical evaluation of the state of stresses in subsal region where the mechanical instability was verified during the drilling of a well. This evaluation was made from numerical simulations of the plane deformation state of a 2D geological section of the area, where a viscoplastic behavior was imposed for the evaporites; and elastoplastic with Cam-Clay and Mohr- Coulomb plasticity criteria for the region below the salt. As a result, we will discuss the voltage trajectories obtained in the simulation with the two types of elastoplastic materials, evidencing a methodological approach to subsidize the prediction of the well stability window in regions with allochthonous salt structures, since the stresses in situ in these regions are significantly altered and it is impossible to accurately predict the magnitude of these voltages from conventional analytical models. Better prediction of in-situ stresses translates into better forecasting of the operating window, thereby reducing operational risks and improving the safety and cost-effectiveness of well designs.

Down-hole damages such as borehole collapse, circulation loss and rock tensile/compressive cracking in the open-hole system are well understood at drilling and well completion stages. However, less effort has been made to understand the instability of cemented sections in High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) wells. The existing analysis shows that, in the perforation zones, casing/cement is subject to instability, particularly in the presence of cavities. This dissertation focuses on the instability mechanism of casing/cement in the non-perforated zones. We investigate the transient thermal behavior in the casing-cement-formation system resulting from the movement of wellbore fluid using finite element method. The critical value of down-hole stresses is identified in both wellbore heating and cooling effects. Differently with the heating effect, the strong cooling effect in a cased hole can produce significant tension inside casing/cement. The confining formation has an obvious influence on the stability of casing/cement. The proposed results reveal that the casing/cement system in the non-homogeneous formation behaves differently from that in homogeneous formation. With this in mind, a three-dimensional layered finite element model is developed to illustrate the casing/cement mechanical behavior in the non-homogeneous formation. The radial stress of cement sheath is found to be highly variable and affected by the contrast in Young’s moduli in the different formation layers. The maximum stress is predicted to concentrate in the casing-cement system confined by the sandstone. Casing wear in the cased-hole system causes significant casing strength reduction, possibly resulting in the casing-cement tangential collapse. In this study, an approach for calculating the stress concentration in the worn casing with considering temperature change is developed, based on boundary superposition. The numerical results indicate that the casing-cement system after casing wear will suffer from severe tangential instability due to the elevated compressive hoop stress. Gas migration during the cementing process results from the fluid cement’s inability to balance formation pore pressure. Past experience emphasized the application of chemical additives to reduce or control gas migration during the cementing process. This report presents the thermal and mechanical behaviors in a cased hole caused by created gas channels after gas migration. In conclusion, the size and the number of gas channels are two important factors in determining mechanical instability in a casing-cement system.

In oil and gas field operations, the dynamic interactions between reservoir and wellbore cannot be ignored, especially during transient flow in the near-wellbore region. As gas hydrocarbons are produced from underground reservoirs to the surface, liquids can come from condensate dropout, water break-through from the reservoir, or vapor condensation in the wellbore. In all three cases, the higher density liquid needs to be transported to the surface by the gas. If the gas phase does not provide sufficient energy to lift the liquid out of the well, the liquid will accumulate in the wellbore. The accumulation of liquid will impose an additional backpressure on the formation that can significantly affect the productivity of the well. The additional backpressure appears to result in a "U-shaped" pressure distribution along the radius in the near-wellbore region that explains the physics of the backflow scenario. However, current modeling approaches cannot capture this U-shaped pressure distribution, and the conventional pressure profile cannot explain the physics of the reinjection. In particular, current steady-state models to predict the arrival of liquid loading, diagnose its impact on production, and screen remedial options are inadequate, including Turner's criterion and Nodal Analysis. However, the dynamic interactions between the reservoir and the wellbore present a fully transient scenario, therefore none of the above solutions captures the complexity of flow transients associated with liquid loading in gas wells. The most satisfactory solution would be to couple a transient reservoir model to a transient well model, which will provide reliable predictive models to link the well dynamics with the intermittent response of a reservoir that is typical of liquid loading in gas wells. The modeling work presented here can be applied to investigate liquid loading mechanisms, and evaluate any other situation where the transient flow behavior of the near-wellbore region of the reservoir cannot be ignored, including system start-up and shut-down.

Large-scale geologic CO₂ storage is a technically feasible way to reduce anthropogenic emission of green house gas to atmosphere by human beings. In large-scale geologic CO₂ sequestration, high injection rate is required to satisfy economics and operational considerations. During the injection phase, temperature and pressure of the storage aquifers may vary significantly with the introduced CO₂. These changes would re-distribute the in-situ stresses in formations and induce fracture initiation or even propagation. If fractures are not permitted by regulators, then the injection operation strategies must be supervised and designed to prevent fracture initiation, and the storage formations should be screened for risk of fracturing. In more flexible regulatory environment, if fractures are allowed, fractures would strongly influence the CO₂ migration profile and storage site usage efficiency depending on fracture length and growth rate. In this dissertation, we built analytical heat transfer models for vertical and horizontal injection wells. The models account for the dependency of overall heat transfer coefficient on injection rate to more accurately predict the borehole temperature. Based on these models, we can calculate temperature change in formation surrounding wellbores and thus evaluate thermo-elastic stress around borehole as well as its impact on fracture initiation pressure. By considering the impact of thermo-elastic effect on fracturing pressure, we predicted maximum injection rate avoiding fracture initiation and provided injection and storage strategies to increase the maximum safe injection rate. The results show that thermo-elastic stress significantly limits maximum injection rate for no-fractured injection scenario, especially for horizontal injectors. To improve injection rate, partial perforation and pre-heating CO₂ before injection have been designed, and results shows that these strategies can strongly negate thermo-elastic influence for various injection scenarios. On the other hand, the model provides parametric analysis on geological and operational conditions of CO₂ storage project for site screening work. In the case of permitting fracture occurrence, a semi-analytical model was built to quantitatively describe fracture propagation and injected fluid migration profile of a fractured vertical injector for storage systems with various boundary conditions. We examined the correlation between fracture growth and CO₂ migration in various injection scenarios. Two-phase fractional flow model of Buckley-Leverett theory has been extended to account for the CO₂-brine three-region flow system (dry CO₂, CO₂-brine, and brine) from a fractured injector. In the sensitivity study, fracture growth and fluid migration greatly depend on Young's modulus of the formation rock and storage site boundary conditions. Consequently, the results show that fast growing, long fractures may yield a flooding pattern with large aspect ratio, as well as early breakthrough at the drainage boundary; in contrast, slow growing short fractures provides high injectivity without changing flooded area shape. We studied the physics for issues related to injection induced fractures in geologic CO₂ sequestration in saline aquifers, assessed risk associated to them and developed low cost and quick analytical models. These models could easily provide predictions on maximum injection rate in no-fracture regulation CO₂ storage projects as well as estimate fracture growth and injected fluid migration under fracture allowable scenarios. "Preferred storage aquifers" have following properties: larger permeability, deep formation, no over pressure, low Young's modulus and low Poisson's ratio and open boundaries. In many practical cases, however, injection strategies have to be designed if some properties of formation are out of ideal range. Besides applications in CO₂ storage, the approach and model we developed can also be applied into any injection induced fracture topics, namely water/CO₂ flooding and wasted water re-injection. / text

Asphaltene precipitation, flocculation, and deposition in the reservoir and producing wells cause serious damages to the production equipment and possible failure to develop the reservoirs. From the field production prospective, predicting asphaltene precipitation, flocculation, and deposition in the reservoir and wellbore may avoid high expenditures associated with the reservoir remediation, well intervention techniques, and field production interruption. Since asphaltene precipitation, flocculation, and deposition strongly depend on the pressure, temperature, and composition variations (e.g. phase instability due to CO2 injection), it is important to have a model that can track the asphaltene behavior during the entire production system from the injection well to the production well, which is absent in the literature. Due to economic concerns for asphaltene related problems, companies spend a lot of money to design their own asphaltene inhibition and remediation procedures. However, due to the complexity and the lack of knowledge on the asphaltene problems, these asphaltene inhibition and remediation programs are not always successful. Near-wellbore asphaltene inhibition and remediation techniques can be divided into two categories: changing operating conditions, and chemical treatment of the reservoir. Although, the field applications of these procedures are discussed in the literature, a dynamic model that can handle asphaltene inhibition and remediation in the reservoir is missing. In this dissertation, a comprehensive non-isothermal compositional reservoir simulator with the capability of modeling near-wellbore asphaltene inhibition and remediation is developed to address the effect of asphaltene deposition on the reservoir performance. This simulator has many additional features compared to the available asphaltene reservoir simulators. We are able to model asphaltene behavior during primary, secondary, and EOR stages. A new approach is presented to model asphaltene precipitation and flocculation. Adsorption, entrainment, and pore-throat plugging are considered as the main mechanisms of the asphaltene deposition. Moreover, we consider porosity, absolute permeability, and oil viscosity reductions due to asphaltene. It is well known that the asphaltene deposition on the rock surface changes the wettability of the rock towards oil-wet condition. Although many experiments in the literature have been conducted to understand the physics underlying wettability alteration due to asphaltene deposition, a comprehensive mathematical model describing this phenomenon is absent. Based on the available experimental data, a wettability alteration model due to asphaltene deposition is proposed and implemented into the simulator. Furthermore, the reservoir simulator is coupled to a wellbore simulator to model asphaltene deposition in the entire production system, from the injection well to the production well. The coupled reservoir/wellbore model can be used to track asphaltene deposition, to diagnose the potential of asphaltene problems in the wellbore and reservoir, and to find the optimum operating conditions of the well that minimizes asphaltene problems. In addition, the simulator is capable of modeling near-wellbore asphaltene remediation using chemical treatment. Based on the mechanisms of the asphaltene-dispersant interactions, a dynamic modeling approach for the near-wellbore asphaltene chemical treatments is proposed and implemented in the simulator. Using the dynamic asphaltene remediation model, we can optimize the asphaltene treatment plan to reduce asphaltene related problems in a field. The results of our simulations show that asphaltene precipitation, flocculation, and deposition in the reservoir and wellbore are dynamic processes. Many parameters, such as oil velocity, wettability alteration, pressure, temperature, and composition variations influence the trend of these processes. In the simulation test cases, we observe that asphaltene precipitation, flocculation, and deposition can occur in primary production, secondary production, or EOR stages. In addition, our results show that the wettability alteration has the major effect on the performance of the reservoir, comparing to the permeability reduction. During CO2 flooding, asphaltene precipitation occurs mostly at the front, and asphaltene deposition is at its maximum close to the reservoir boundaries where the front velocity is at its minimum. In addition, the results of the coupled reservoir/wellbore simulator show that the behavior of asphaltene in the wellbore and reservoir are fully coupled with each other. Therefore, a standalone reservoir or wellbore simulator is not able to predict the asphaltene behavior properly in the entire system. Finally, we show that the efficiency of an asphaltene chemical treatment plan depends on the type of dispersant, amount of dispersant, soaking time, number of treatment jobs, and the time period between two treatment jobs. / text

During injection of a high-viscosity, non-Newtonian polymer into a long horizontal well, a significant pressure drop occurs along the well length. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling of the shear-thinning flow of polymer in the wellbore, coupled with the viscoelastic flow in composite gravel-pack/near-well formation zone, was carried out to develop convenient correlations for axial pressure values of both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids along the well length, for use in chemical EOR simulations. The detailed CFD modeling of the non-Newtonian flow behavior of polymer within the horizontal wellbore, completion zone and the near-well formation, not only allows accurate accounting of pressure distribution along the long horizontal well, but also can be employed for screening diagnosis for possible injectivity inefficiencies resulting from non-uniform pressure values. At both high and low injection rates, CFD modeling predicts non-uniform pressure distributions for highly viscous fluids. The inclusive pressure correlation was implemented into UTCHEM, a University of Texas at Austin research simulator, to determine the importance of including pressure drop in polymer injections. Early times (i.e., less than 100 days) yielded a significant oil recovery deviation from a uniform pressure wellbore. However, at later times the recovery loss generated by the pressure decrease was deemed negligible; therefore, the traditional assumption regarding uniform pressure in horizontal wellbores was still reasonable for highly viscous non-Newtonian flow. This CFD study is the first mechanistic investigation of the polymer injectivity with detailed description of the wellbore, completion zone and near-well formation, and with full accounting of the shear-thinning rheology for pipe flow and the viscoelastic rheology of polymer in porous media. With increased use of very high molecular-weight polymers for chemical EOR processes for mobility control, the latter mechanism is known to be critical. / text

This dissertation is composed of three parts of major contributions. In Chapter II, we discuss analytical study of contaminant transport from a finite source in a finite-thickness aquifer. This chapter provides analytical solutions of contaminant transport from one-, two-, and three-dimensional finite sources in a finite-thickness aquifer using Green's function method. A library of unpublished analytical solutions with different finite source geometry is provided. A graphically integrated software CTINT is developed to calculate the temporal integrations in the analytical solutions and obtain the final solutions of concentration. In Chapter III, we obtained solutions of groundwater flow to a finite-diameter horizontal well including wellbore storage and skin effect in a three-dimensionally anisotropic leaky aquifer. These solutions improve previous line source solutions by considering realistic well geometry and offer better description of drawdown near the horizontal well. These solutions are derived on the basis of the separation of the source and the geometric functions. The graphically integrated computer program FINHOW is written to generate type curves of groundwater flow to a finite-diameter horizontal well. The influence of the finite-diameter of the well, the wellbore storage, the skin effect, the leakage parameter, and the aquifer anisotropy is thoroughly analyzed. In Chapter IV, a general theory of groundwater flow to a fractured or non-fractured aquifer considering wellbore storage and skin effect is provided. Solutions for both leaky confined and water table aquifers are provided. The fracture model used in this study is the standard double-porosity model. The storage of the aquitard (the leaky confining layer) is included in the formula. A program denoted FINHOW2 is written to facilitate the calculation. Sensitivity of the solution to the confined versus unconfined conditions, fractured versus non-fractured conditions, and wellbore storage and skin effects is analyzed.