This interdisciplinary book encompasses the fields of rock mechanics, structural geology and petroleum engineering to address a wide range of geomechanical problems that arise during the exploitation of oil and gas reservoirs. It considers key practical issues such as prediction of pore pressure, estimation of hydrocarbon column heights and fault seal potential, determination of optimally stable well trajectories, casing set points and mud weights, changes in reservoir performance during depletion, and production-induced faulting and subsidence. The book establishes the basic principles involved before introducing practical measurement and experimental techniques to improve recovery and reduce exploitation costs. It illustrates their successful application through case studies taken from oil and gas fields around the world. This book is a practical reference for geoscientists and engineers in the petroleum and geothermal industries, and for research scientists interested in stress measurements and their application to problems of faulting and fluid flow in the crust.

Applied Petroleum Geomechanics provides a bridge between theory and practice as a daily use reference that contains direct industry applications. Going beyond the basic fundamentals of rock properties, this guide covers critical field and lab tests, along with interpretations from actual drilling operations and worldwide case studies, including abnormal formation pressures from many major petroleum basins. Rounding out with borehole stability solutions and the geomechanics surrounding hydraulic fracturing and unconventional reservoirs, this comprehensive resource gives petroleum engineers a much-needed guide on how to tackle today's advanced oil and gas operations. - Presents methods in formation evaluation and the most recent advancements in the area, including tools, techniques and success stories - Bridges the gap between theory of rock mechanics and practical oil and gas applications - Helps readers understand pore pressure calculations and predictions that are critical to shale and hydraulic activity

A comprehensive overview of the key geologic, geomechanical and engineering principles that govern the development of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs. Covering hydrocarbon-bearing formations, horizontal drilling, reservoir seismology and environmental impacts, this is an invaluable resource for geologists, geophysicists and reservoir engineers.

A concise examination of the use of elasticity in solving geotechnical engineering problems.

Geomechanics investigates the origin, magnitude and deformational consequences of stresses in the crust. In recent years awareness of geomechanical processes has been heightened by societal debates on fracking, human-induced seismicity, natural geohazards and safety issues with respect to petroleum exploration drilling, carbon sequestration and radioactive waste disposal. This volume explores the common ground linking geomechanics with inter alia economic and petroleum geology, structural geology, petrophysics, seismology, geotechnics, reservoir engineering and production technology. Geomechanics is a rapidly developing field that brings together a broad range of subsurface professionals seeking to use their expertise to solve current challenges in applied and fundamental geoscience. A rich diversity of case studies herein showcase applications of geomechanics to hydrocarbon exploration and field development, natural and artificial geohazards, reservoir stimulation, contemporary tectonics and subsurface fluid flow. These papers provide a representative snapshot of the exciting state of geomechanics and establish it firmly as a flourishing subdiscipline of geology that merits broadest exposure across the academic and corporate geosciences.

Designing an efficient drilling program is a key step for the development of an oil and/or gas field. Variations in reservoir pressure, saturation and temperature, induced by reservoir production or CO2 injection, involve various coupled physical and chemical processes. Geomechanics, which consider all thermohydromechanical phenomena involved in rock behavior, play an important role in every operation involved in the exploitation of hydrocarbons, from drilling to production, and in CO2 geological storage operations as well. Pressure changes in the reservoir modify the in situ stresses and induce strains, not only within the reservoir itself, but also in the entire sedimentary column. In turn, these stress variations and associated strains modify the fluids flow in the reservoir and change the wellbore stability parameters. This book offers a large overview on applications of Geomechanics to petroleum industry. It presents the fundamentals of rock mechanics, describes the methods used to characterise rocks in the laboratory and the modelling of their mechanical behaviour ; it gives elements of numerical geomechanical modelling at the site scale. It also demonstrates the role of Geomechanics in the optimisation of drilling and production : it encompasses drillability, wellbore stability, sand production and hydraulic fracturing ; it provides the basic attainments to deal with the environmental aspects of heave or subsidence of the surface layers, CO2 sequestration and well abandonment ; and it shows how seismic monitoring and geomechanical modelling of reservoirs can help to optimise production or check cap rock integrity. This book will be of interest to all engineers involved in oil field development and petroleum engineering students, whether drillers or producers. It aims also at providing a large range of potential users with a simple approach of a broad field of knowledge.

The purpose of this book is to bridge the gap between the traditional Geomechanics and Numerical Geotechnical Modelling with applications in science and practice. Geomechanics is rarely taught within the rigorous context of Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics, while when it comes to Numerical Modelling, commercially available finite elements or finite differences software utilize constitutive relationships within the rigorous framework. As a result, young scientists and engineers have to learn the challenging subject of constitutive modelling from a program manual and often end up with using unrealistic models which violate the Laws of Thermodynamics. The book is introductory, by no means does it claim any completeness and state of the art in such a dynamically developing field as numerical and constitutive modelling of soils. The author gives basic understanding of conventional continuum mechanics approaches to constitutive modelling, which can serve as a foundation for exploring more advanced theories. A considerable effort has been invested here into the clarity and brevity of the presentation. A special feature of this book is in exploring thermomechanical consistency of all presented constitutive models in a simple and systematic manner.