Geomechanical Application in Petroleum Engineering

This paper has reviewed the geomechanical studies and their applications in petroleum engineering. Geomechanical studies are applied in the wellbore and reservoir to establish the stability, which is a major problem in oil and gas industry. Most of studies are concerned with the drilling operations, however production operations and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods also alter the wellbore and reservoir stresses. It may cause problems such as collapse, sand production and fracture in the wells. Many researchers have tried to model the stress in the borehole in more than fifty years. They have governed various equations to investigate the flow, thermal and chemical effect in stress distribution. They have done their studied for many different conditions in different flow phases. In order to define the stability conditions, different failure criteria have been introduced. Many stability studies have been implemented using these criteria. The stress analysis should be coupled with reservoir simulation. During the lifetime of the reservoir, the change in stress could lead to the failure, so its effect should be studied on the field stability. However, there are lots of reservoir studies that did not consider geomechanics.