Geomechanical and Numerical Studies of Casing Damages in a Reservoir with Solid Production

Abstract

© 2015 Springer-Verlag Wien Casings damage is a usually reported incident during production in many fields. This incident is conventionally induced by compressional, tensional, burst or collapse forces applied to the casing string. Excessive anisotropic and non-uniform stresses, causing shear failure in unconsolidated reservoirs, are one of the main reasons reported for the casing failure. In this paper, geomechanical and finite element numerical analysis was applied to model hydraulic and mechanical interactions between casing, cement sheath and formations in a carbonate reservoir located in Southern of Iran. The geomechanical analysis indicated that significant in situ stresses induced as a result of the fault reactivation and pore pressure reduction due to reservoir depletion could be the potential reasons for the casing damage experienced in this field. To assess this, numerical analysis was carried out to simulate the casing in the presence of existing forces during drilling, completion and production phases. It was found that excessive and non-uniform stresses surrounding the wellbore together with pore pressure reduction caused the formation to loss its strength and fail. This shear failure results in solid production, creation of the cavities and deformation of the casing because of the excessive buckling force. In addition, a new empirical equation for prediction of ultimate strength of the casing was developed according to the parameters introduced by sensitivity analysis.