Application of Partial Hydromechanical Coupling Methodology in a Fault Reactivation Analysis

Aiming to increase hydrocarbon production, the oil industry has developed recovery methods whose purpose is to get more production. Thus, several problems may be encountered when making use of these techniques, mainly the conventional one. In addition, consideration of geological structures in reservoir engineering, such as fault zones, has fundamental character for determining realistic response for the production of hydrocarbons. In the case of faults zones, its consideration in the model has significant importance currently, especially with regard to the possibility of reactivation and possible loss of tightness of the reservoir. Thus, the aim of this study was assess reservoir models with a fault zone using partially coupled hydro-mechanical simulations. The methodology considers a fault zone whose behavior is given by the Mohr-Coulomb yield criterion. The plasticity model showed consistent results with the process of reactivation for the models. Thus, for the case where the objective is to determine the maximum flow rate of injection as well as its spatial configurations aimed at maintaining the field production, it is possible to establish the flow rate that may result in the initiation of the fault reactivation. Furthermore, the effect of surrounding rocks had a great influence in the time required to initiate the process of reactivation. As a general conclusion, it is stated that the consideration of fault zones in reservoirs, as well as surrounding rocks, must be taken into account to obtain more accurate response to the field behavior.