Geomechanical Effects in Oil Reservoir Simulation

Conventional reservoir simulation simplifies the geomechanical effect by modifying the pore volume as a simple linear relationship with the pressure variation. A proposed hydro-mechanical problem is solved using the coupled iterative method with pore compressibility as the coupling parameter and allowing permeability change as a function of porosity. Permeability-porosity relationship used is the power law and porosity exponent is based on laboratory experiments using several sedimentary rocks. The consideration of the adjacent rocks and the permeability change during the simulation impacts directly on the production and displacement curves and consequently on the planning of interventions of an oil field. The scenario idealized in this paper is described in detail so the results presented here may be reproduced and compared with other methodologies when geomechanical effects on permeability are considered.