Abstract
A fit for purpose 4D Geomechanical model is regarded valuable for most fields. Although tools for building such models have been available for some time they are commonly not made or not fully utilized due to the extensive amount of time, complexity and costs involved. In Equinor a workflow (DE4RM) has been developed for fast 4D geomechanical modeling, effective visualization and interpretation. Using this workflow, models have been built for more than 20 fields over the last 4 years and results applied for a variety of areas including input to seismic time shift analysis, short and long term well planning, estimation of cooling effects from injectors, subsidence/compaction predictions, input to well completion, monitoring optimization, overburden integrity studies, out of zone injection and fault re-activation assessment. Some examples on such use will be given in this paper. On the modeling side key factors for efficient modeling are utilization of existing reservoir models, use of commercial finite element software and a streamlined, easy to use, workflow for all pre-processing steps. Particularly, a well-equipped toolbox for various grid-editing functionality has been essential for being able to complete the modeling fast enough (1-3 weeks). Once a model is built it is readily available for both geomechanical experts and non-specialists through the open source powerful visualization platform Resinsight. In this software geomechanical capabilities have been developed over the last years guided by practical use of the models. Further development on both the modeling, visualization and post-processing side is ongoing and as Resinsight is open source, use of the software and development of new functionality is possible for anyone. In summary, 4D geomechanical modeling and utilization of such models has become a daily activity in Equinor for numerous applications, gradually replacing simplified 1-D based methods with the faster and more accurate DE4RM methodology.
