Mechanical properties and modeling of seal-forming lithologies

The goal of this research is to evaluate the roles of deformation and the occurrence of weak sedimentary lithologies subjected to gravitational loads in shaping conventional and unconventional oil and gas reservoirs. Two sedimentary lithologies that influence the geometries, physical properties, and heterogeneities of oil and gas reservoirs are shale and rocksalt. Both form effect barriers to the flow and communication of petroleum and gas and, in many cases, form the seals to major reservoirs due to their low permeabilities. Both are actively deformed in depositional environments due to their low strengths relative to gravitational loads applied. Thus, the shapes of seal-forming units, and the nature of fractures and faults that may breach them depend upon either the mechanical properties of shale or those of salt, and the loading histories to which they have been subjected. Deformed shales may, in addition, serve as unconventional reservoirs of gas if open fractures within them provide sufficient porosity. The fracture and flow properties of shales are not well constrained, and the authors are currently investigating these properties experimentally. The rheology of rocksalt, on the other hand, is well known and they believe that the time is right to apply the experimentally constrained constitutivemore » relations for rocksalt to deformations in the Earth. Efforts are continuing on modeling fracture anisotropy and the authors have examined simple, two-mica models to evaluate the mechanical interactions they proposed for gneiss and mica-poor schists. Brief summaries of the progress and results to date for (1) the mechanical properties of schist, (2) a two-mica model of fracture anisotropy, (3) deformation of shale, and (4) modeling of salt and shale tectonics of the northern Gulf of Mexico are given in the following sections. 35 refs., 33 figs., 1 tab.« less