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A Study of Wellbore Stability in Shales Including Poroelastic, Chemical, and Thermal Effects
A Study of Wellbore Stability in Shales Including Poroelastic, Chemical, and Thermal Effects
www.elsevier.com/locate/jpetscieng
Abstract
This paper presents the development of a model for determining wellbore stability for oil and gas drilling operations. The
effects of mechanical forces and poroelasticity on shale behavior are included, as well as chemical and thermal effects.
Chemical effects are caused by the imbalance between the water activity in the drilling mud and the shale water activity. The
magnitude of this contribution depends on the effectiveness of the mud/shale system to perform as a semipermeable membrane.
Experimental results show that osmotic pressures develop inside shales when they are exposed to different drilling fluids. This
osmotic pressure is treated as an equivalent hydraulic potential, and is then added to the hydraulic wellbore and pore pressure as
time progresses.
Thermal diffusion inside the drilled formation induces additional pore pressure and rock stress changes and consequently
affects shale stability. Thermal effects are important because thermal diffusion into shale formations occurs more quickly than
hydraulic diffusion and thereby dominates pore pressure changes during early time.
Rock temperature and pore pressure are coupled for most porous media studies; however, we have found that they can be
partially decoupled for shale formations by assuming that convective heat transfer is negligible. The partially decoupled
temperature and pore pressure effects can therefore be solved analytically under appropriate initial and boundary conditions.
Experimental data for shale strength alteration, which occurs when shales are exposed to different fluids, are also included for
the determination of cohesion strength decay.
Pore pressure, collapse stress, and critical mud weights are variables investigated for determining poroelastic, chemical, and
thermal effects on shale stability. The most important factors, which affect wellbore stability, are clearly identified.
D 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Wellbore stability; Shale stability; Poroelastic effect; Chemical effect; Thermal effect
1. Introduction for 75% of all formations drilled by the oil and gas
industry, and 90% of wellbore stability problems
Wellbore instability is a serious drilling problem occur in shale formations. Boreholes can experience
that costs the oil industry over US$500 –1000 mil- hole enlargement, hole reduction, drilling fluid loss
lion each year. It is also reported that shales account to the formation, poor hole cleaning, and well con-
trol problems. Most of the above problems result in
higher drilling costs. Shale failure is primarily caused
* Corresponding author. Now with ChevronTexaco EPTC,
USA. by the redistribution of in situ stress which subse-
E-mail address: GChen@ChevronTexaco.com (G. Chen). quently exceeds the shear or tensile strength of the
1
Now with University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, USA. rock.
0920-4105/03/$ - see front matter D 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0920-4105(03)00030-5
168 G. Chen et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 38 (2003) 167–176
Charlez (1991) and Wang and Papamichos (1994), are pressure; pnw = near wellbore pore pressure; T0 = ini-
listed in Table 1. tial temperature; Tw = wellbore wall temperature; rw =
For shale, the coupling coefficient c0V is signifi- wellbore radius; and pk = chemical potential. The
cantly less than c0 thus the pressure term in the osmotic pressure in a mud/shale system can be deter-
temperature equation can be neglected. The finite- mined by the following expression,
difference solution of temperature distribution for Eq.
(1) (Chen, 2001) also indicates that the c0Vterm can be RT awm
pk ¼ Im ln ð5Þ
ignored for shales, by observing the agreement V awsh
between the finite difference solution to Eq. (1) and
the analytical solution to Eq. (3). For the second where the gas constant R = 8.314 kg m2 s 2 g mol 1
equation in Eq. (1), if cbcV, one may suggest ignor- K 1; T = temperature, K; V = 1.8 10 5 m3/g mol,
ing the hydraulic effect on pore pressure distribution partial molar volume of the water; awm = mud water
and the pore pressure will be a steady-state function of activity; awsh = shale water activity; and Im = mem-
temperature changes for specific radial distances. This brane efficiency. Water activity and membrane effi-
simplified approach only applies for large distance ciency are dimensionless and range from 0 to 1. As
and long time, under which temperature reaches a shown by Eq. (5), the osmotic pressure can be
pseudo-steady-state distribution. Hence, the problem adjusted by modifying the drilling fluid chemistry so
in Eq. (1) can be partially decoupled in this manner that the drilling fluid satisfies a given wellbore stabil-
and the second part of Eq. (1) vanishes, ity requirement.
2 As an example, consider a shale which has a 0.915
BT B T 1 BT water activity in contact with a water-based fluid
¼ c0 þ ð3Þ
Bt Br2 r Br which has a 0.78 water activity and a membrane
2 efficiency of 0.1. Assuming the rock temperature is
Bp B p 1 Bp BT 375.7 K, the osmotic pressure can be estimated as,
¼c þ þ cV
Bt Br2 r Br Bt
8:314 375:7 0:78
pk ¼ 0:1 ln ¼ 2:77 MPa ð6Þ
The initial conditions and boundary conditions are 1:8 105 0:915
considered as,
This would mean that there is a driving osmotic
pðr; 0Þ ¼ p0 ; pðl; tÞ ¼ p0
potential of 2.77 MPa trying to drive the water out
of the shale.
pðrw ; tz0Þ ¼ pnw ¼ pw pk
2.1. Temperature
pf ðrw ; tz0Þ ¼ pnw p0 ¼ pw pk p0 ð4Þ
The wellbore wall temperature can be considered
T ðr; 0Þ ¼ T0 ; T ðl; tÞ ¼ T0
to be equal to the temperature of the drilling fluid in
the annulus. The drilling fluid temperature can be
T ðrw ; tÞ ¼ Tw ; T f ðrw ; tÞ ¼ Tw T0
calculated using a steady-state method (Holmes and
where pf = pore pressure fluctuations; T f = temperature Swift, 1970) or a transient approach (Kabir et al.,
fluctuations; p0 = initial pore pressure; pw = wellbore 1996). For constant temperature at the wellbore wall
Table 1
Typical coefficients for different rocks
Rock Hydraulic Thermal Coupling Coupling
diffusivity c, diffusivity c0, coefficient c0V, coefficient cV,
m2/s m2/s m2/s MPa MPa/K
Weber sandstone 2.07e 2 1.64e 6 5.92e 3 0.4
Tennessee marble 1.3e 5 1.78e 6 3.29e 7 0.5
Shale (abyssal clay) 3.41e 10 9.54e 7 7.05e 10 0.01
170 G. Chen et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 38 (2003) 167–176
and the far-field formation boundary, the closed-form ally decoupled problem matches the solution to the
solution is (Carslaw and Jaeger, 1959), coupled problem (Chen, 2001). Therefore, the parti-
ally decoupled problem can reflect the coupling
( pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ) behavior of shales and can be used to analyze the
1 1 K0 ðr s=c0 Þ
T ðr; tÞ ¼ T0 þ ðTw T0 ÞL pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð7Þ effect of temperature and pore pressure changes on
s K0 ðrw s=c0 Þ shale stability.
the modified Lade failure criterion can predict the Two effects can cause the displacement of the
rock strength closest to test results, compared to other initial collapse failure location: (1) the poroelastic
failure criteria such as Drucker – Prager criteria and effect of equalized pore pressure at the wellbore wall,
Mohr – Coulomb criteria (Ewy, 2002). Hence, the and (2) the thermal diffusion between the wellbore
modified Lade failure criterion may be suggested for and the formation.
wellbore stability studies. Cooling the formation is found to be helpful in
The decline of rock cohesive strength is used for maintaining wellbore stability. Cooler muds can
the time-dependent effect when rock samples are reduce pore pressure and increase collapse stress.
exposed to selected fluids. Time-dependent cohesion Hotter muds can result in unstable shales and are
changes are interpreted from triaxial test results (Che- not desirable in drilling operations. The impact of
nevert and Pernot, 1998) with measured failure thermal effects depends on the magnitude of the
angles. An averaged constant friction angle of 30j is coupling coefficient cV that can vary from 0.012 to
used for this study. As shale samples are hydrated, in 0.372 MPa/K for shales.
most cases, other properties such as Young’s modulus, The following factors are found to be important
Poisson’s ratio, and Biot’s constant may also change when modeling wellbore stability: unequal horizon-
with the stress history and the shale – fluid interaction. tal in situ stresses, membrane efficiency, water
Due to the limited quantity of lab data, the time activity ratio (between the drilling fluid and shale
dependency of other rock strength properties are not formation), pore pressure, rock strength, the ratio of
investigated. shale hydraulic diffusivity to thermal diffusivity, the
This study shows that pore pressure can be parti- thermal coupling coefficient cV, thermal expansion
ally decoupled from temperature for shale formations. coefficients of shale and pore fluid, and the temper-
The partially decoupled equations can be solved ature difference between the drilling fluid and the
analytically under appropriate initial and boundary formation.
conditions while including thermal and chemical
effects. Nomenclature
Poroelastic effects on collapse stress may be sig- A, B material constants
nificant if a large mud pressure/pore pressure differ- awm drilling mud water activity
ential is applied. In this study, we found that awsh shale water activity
poroelastic effects change the collapse stress only B Skempton coefficient
slightly if the wellbore undrained response at early C cohesive strength
time of the fluid/shale contact is neglected. c hydraulic diffusivity
Altering mud water activity can be considered as cV coupling coefficient
an alternative approach to control wellbore stability in c0 thermal diffusivity
addition to raising mud density. A lower mud water c 0V coupling coefficient
activity can help decrease pore pressure and thereby E Young’s modulus
increase rock effective stress conditions and conse- Im membrane efficiency
quently increase shale stability. In addition, wellbore J1ef the effective mean stress
stability control can also be achieved by changing the J21/2 the shear stress
membrane efficiency of the fluid/shale system (a K0 second kind of modefied Bessel fuction of
challenging task). For example, higher membrane order zero
efficiency is beneficial when the shale water activity L1 inversion of Laplace transform
is greater than that of the drilling fluid. A lower p pore pressure
membrane efficiency is preferred if the drilling fluid p0 initial pore pressure
activity is greater. pnw near wellbore pore pressure
When determining the critical mud weight window, pw wellbore pressure
both the wellbore wall and the entire near wellbore area pk osmotic pressure
need to be inspected for failure because the location of pf(r,t) pore pressure fluctuations
shear failure can be displaced inside the formation. r near wellbore radial position
176 G. Chen et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 38 (2003) 167–176
rw wellbore radius Chenevert, M.E., 1970. Shale alteration by water adsorption. J. Pet.
R universal gas constant Technol. 22, 1141 – 1148 (September).
Chenevert, M.E., Pernot, V., 1998. Control of shale swelling pres-
t time sures using inhibitive water-base muds. Paper No. 49263, Pre-
T0 initial formation temperature sented at 67th SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibi-
Tw wellbore wall temperature tion, New Orleans, LA, September, pp. 27 – 30.
T f(r,t) temperature fluctuations Cui, L., Cheng, A.H.-D., Abousleisman, Y., 1997. Poroelastic sol-
ution for an inclined borehole. J. Appl. Mech., Trans. ASME 64,
V partial molar volume of water
32 – 38 (March).
a Biot’s constant Detournay, E., Cheng, A.H.-D., 1988. Poroelastic response of a
af thermal expansion coefficient of pore fluid borehole in a non-hydrostatic stress field. Int. J. Rock Mech.
am thermal expansion coefficient of rock matrix Min. Sci. Geomech. Abstr. 25 (3), 171 – 182.
DT mud-formation temperature Ewy, R.T., 1999. Wellbore-stability predictions by use of a modi-
/ friction angle; formation porosity fied Lade criterion. SPE Drill. Complet., 85 – 91 (June).
Ewy, R.T., 2002. 3D stress effects on the failure of tunnels, well-
m drained Poisson’s ratio bores, and hollow cylinders. Proceedings NARMS-TAC 2002,
mu undrained Poisson’s ratio Toronto, 7 – 10 July.
rcl collapse failure index Fonseca, C.F.H., 1998. Chemical – mechanical modeling of well-
rrr, ruu, and rzz bore instability in shales. PhD dissertation, The University of
radial, hoop, and axial stress, respectively Texas at Austin.
Holmes, C.S., Swift, S.C., 1970. Calculation of circulating mud
rt tensile strength temperatures. J. Pet. Technol. 22, 670 – 674 (June).
Kabir, C.S., Hasan, A.R., Kouba, G.E., Ameen, M.M., 1996. De-
termining circulation fluid temperature in drilling, workover,
Acknowledgements and well-control operations. SPE Drill. Complet., 74 – 79
(June).
Kurashige, M., 1989. A thermoelastic theory of fluid-filled porous
The financial support of the Drilling Research materials. Int. J. Solids Struct. 25 (9), 1039 – 1052.
Consortium at the University of Texas is gratefully Li, X., Cui, L., Roegiers, J.-C., 1998. Thermoporoelastic modeling
acknowledged. of wellbore stability in non-hydrostatic stress field. 3rd North
American Rock Mechanics Symposium Proceedings, NARMS
’98. Int. J. Rock. Mech. Min. Sci., p. 584.
McLean, M.R., Addis, M.A., 1990. Wellbore stability: the effect of
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