C. Delle Piane

Mechanical instability induced by water weakening in laboratory fluid injection tests

To assess water-weakening effects in reservoir rocks, previous experimental studies have focused on changes in the failure envelopes derived from mechanical tests conducted on rocks fully saturated either with water or with inert fluids. So far, little attention has been paid to the mechanical behavior during fluid injection under conditions similar to enhanced oil recovery operations. We studied the effect of fluid injection on the mechanical behavior of the weakly consolidated Sherwood sandstone in laboratory experiments. Our specimens were instrumented with 16 ultrasonic P wave transducers for both passive and active acoustic monitoring during loading and fluid injection to record the acoustic signature of fluid migration in the pore space and the development of damage. Calibration triaxial tests were conducted on three samples saturated with air, water, or oil. In a second series of experiments, water and inert oil were injected into samples critically loaded up to 80% or 70% of the dry or oil-saturated compressive strength, respectively, to assess the impact of fluid migration on mechanical strength and elastic properties. The fluids were injected with a low back pressure to minimize effective stress variations during injection. Our observations show that creep takes place with a much higher strain rate for water injection compared to oil injection. The most remarkable difference is that water injection in both dry and oil-saturated samples triggers mechanical instability (macroscopic failure) within half an hour whereas oil injection does not after several hours. The analysis of X-ray computed tomography images of postmortem samples revealed that the mechanical instability was probably linked to loss of cohesion in the water-invaded region.

Physical properties of Mesozoic sedimentary rocks from the Perth Basin, Western Australia

The Perth Basin (PB) hosts important aquifers within the Yarragadee Formation and adjacent geological formations with potential for economic exploitation by both geothermal energy and carbon capture and sequestration. Published studies on the reservoir quality of the sedimentary units of the PB are very few. This study reports some petrophysical and lithological characteristics of the sedimentary units of interest for geothermal and geosequestration scenarios and help interpolation toward non-sampled intervals. A new fluvial-dominated lithofacies scheme was developed for the Mesozoic stratigraphy from four wells drilled in the central PB (Pinjarra-1, Cockburn-1, Gingin-1 and Gingin-2) based on grainsize, sorting, sedimentary structures and colour that relate to the environment of deposition. Systematic laboratory measurements of permeability, porosity, and thermal conductivity were conducted on core samples to investigate a variety of lithofacies and depths from these wells. Empirical correlations are established among the different physical properties, indicating encouraging relationships for full PB basin interpolation such as between porosity and permeability, when the samples are grouped into ‘hydraulic units’ defined by a ‘flow zone indicator’ parameter. The common principal controls on the PB thermal conductivity are the pore space arrangement and mineralogical content, which are strongly lithofacies-specific. Therefore, the lithofacies type could be a good first-order discriminator for describing spatial variations of thermal conductivity and then estimate their flow zone indicator.

Fault reactivation in travertine and its impact on hydraulic transmissibility: laboratory experiments and mesoscale structures

Direct shear experiments were undertaken to investigate the effect of faulting and reactivation on the hydromechanical characteristics of faults in continental carbonate samples. The tested rock is a travertine of continental, microbial origin with a calcite content of 99 wt%, with a strongly laminated texture. Analyses of the intact and sheared samples performed using medical X-ray computed tomography (CT) revealed that the porosity is mainly composed of subplanar pores and vugs. Permeability is high along the laminations, controlled by interconnected pores and fractures. The travertine is a lithological analogue for Aptian pre-salt oil reservoir rocks found in South Atlantic offshore basins. Three samples, with dimensions of 240 × 110 × 150 mm, were sheared to a maximum displacement of 120 mm under different levels of effective vertical stress (6–45 MPa), resulting in the formation of cataclastic fault gouge surrounded by a dense fracture network. A new experimental method was used to reactivate the artificially formed fault by performing cyclic vertical loading at different shear displacements on a previously sheared sample, while keeping a constant pore-pressure differential throughout the test. Pore-fluid responses across the fault zone were monitored continuously during both deformation (dynamic transmissibility) and hold periods (static transmissibility). Results show that the transmissibility reduces in all the samples for all values of the applied effective vertical stress and during shear reversal. The static transmissibility also decreases over time, which may be a result of creep deformation or the blocking of pore channels with gouge material. Our results indicate that once the gouge material is developed in the core of a carbonate fault zone, the dynamic transmissibility across that fault is permanently decreased, with little dependence on subsequent kinematics of reactivation, or changes in stress, so long as the gouge zone is not breached by a new structure.

A passive seismic approach to estimating the thickness of sedimentary cover on the Nullarbor Plain, Western Australia

ABSTRACT Passive seismic approaches, using a single-station, enable rapid, cost-effective and non-invasive estimates of the thickness of sedimentary rocks overlying crystalline basement. This approach was applied to estimate the Cenozoic and Cretaceous succession beneath the Nullarbor Plain in southeastern Western Australia. Passive seismic data acquired at the majority of the 94 sites show a single, strong resonance frequency peak between 0.4 and 0.6 Hz suggesting an impedance contrast of a single subsurface layer. Modelling these resonance frequencies against known stratigraphy at 12 drill holes shows that this impedance contrast corresponds to the contact of the base of the Cenozoic–Cretaceous sedimentary succession of the Eucla and Bight basins with the crystalline basement. Data from the remaining sites produced sediment thickness estimates ranging from only tens of metres near the western edge of the Nullarbor Plain to over 860 m near its southern margin. Near this margin, rapid thickening of the sedimentary cover is coincident with an interpreted paleosea-cliff or indicative of localised faulting. Beneath the Western Australian portion of the Nullarbor Plain the sedimentary cover is on average 320 m thick with the succession thinning gradually towards the margins of the basin. A passive seismic approach is thus seen as a useful screening tool for the mineral exploration industry in areas that are under cover allowing for better targeting and cost-reduction in greenfields exploration.