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Pore Pressure Paper
Pore Pressure Paper
art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Fracture pressure is one of the most important parameters in wellbore stability. Fracture pressure shows
Received 23 April 2014 the ability of rock to hold vertical stress before starts to fracture. The application of fracture gradient (FG)
Received in revised form affects the well design, such as mud weight profile, casing setting depth, and cementing operation.
24 July 2015
Fracture gradient could be determined directly by using leak-off test (LOT) and formation integrity test
Accepted 7 September 2015
Available online 14 September 2015
(FIT), and calculation from logging data. There have been a lot of studies in predicting fracture gradient
after the fundamental theory of fracture pressure was developed by Hubbert and Willis in 1957. However,
Keywords: most of those studies were performed without considering the geological characteristic, such as pre-
Fracture pressure cipitation environment, geology structure, and stratigraphy. A new methodology to predict fracture
Geomechanics
pressure from former calculations, Matthew–Kelly and Eaton, is proposed. The methodology character-
Poisson's ratio
ized the formation lithology from Poisson's ratio and stress ratio value which is corrected and analyzed
Stress ratio
Wellbore stability by two correcting constants, a and b. As the result, a new value of Poisson's and stress ratio of the
formation was generated and the accuracy of fracture gradient was improved. In addition, the flexibility
of this methodology indicates that this methodology could be applied in various drilling area.
& 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Fracture gradient is a crucial parameter for developing a suc- Prior to drilling, rocks are in near-balanced state and the me-
cessful drilling program, especially in wellbore stability. An initial chanical stresses in the formation are less than the strength of rocks.
objective of this study is to develop a modification of previously Near-balanced state provides a naturally occurs stress in place which
fracture gradient prediction, Matthew–Kelly and Eaton, especially called the in-situ stress. There are three principal in-situ stress
by correcting the stress ratio constants. magnitudes, the vertical stress, Sv, equal to total weight of rocks and
This study shows improper fracture gradient estimation in fluid above that depth; the maximum principal horizontal stress, SH;
three exploration wells drilled in field X and drilling problem take and the minimum principal horizontal stress, Sh (Amoco, 1996).
place. It is necessary to address this concern by further in- The magnitudes of each stress influence the fault regime in
earth crust. Anderson (1951) classifies an area as being char-
vestigating the effect of vary lithology type in selected study area.
acterized by normal, strike-slip or reverse faulting depend on
However, several obstacles are encountered during this study,
whether (i) the crust is extending and steeply dipping normal
especially in experimental data availability including logging data,
faults accommodate movement of the hanging wall (the block of
leak-off test (LOT), or formation integrity test (FIT). Solving this
rock above the fault), (ii) block or crust are sliding horizontally
problem, this study proposed a new study methodology due to
past one another along nearly vertical strike-slip faults, or (iii) the
obtain the preferable results approaching the actual fracture crust is in compression and relatively shallow-dipping reverse
gradient. faults are associated with the hanging wall block moving upward
with respect to the footwall block (Zooback, 2007).
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: bonar.marbun@tm.ac.id (B.T.H. Marbun), 1.2. Fracture gradient theory
anisa.corina@gmail.com (A.N. Corina),
valdy.arimbawa@gmail.com (G.V. Arimbawa),
ramadhana.aristya@yahoo.com (R. Aristya), sgt.purwito@gmail.com (S. Purwito), 1.2.1. Fracture gradient estimation methods
aldiano.f.h@gmail.com (A.F. Hardama). Methods to determine formation fracture gradient consist of
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2015.09.006
0920-4105/& 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
262 B.T.H. Marbun et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 135 (2015) 261–267
predictive methods and verification methods. At the initial well 1.2.1.3. Eaton. Eaton (1969) proposed a calculation for fracture
planning, formation fracture gradient is calculated following the gradient by using another independent variable, Poisson's ratio
predictive methods. Afterwards, during drilling operation, fracture that shows a relationship between horizontal and vertical matrix
pressure is verified by pressure test after casing is cemented. The stress (Baker Huges INTEQ, 1996).
verified result is useful for well planning in the next drilling
ν = − ε2/ε1 (4)
operation.
Yes
Model Validation
No
Fig. 1. Proposed study methodology on fracture gradient prediction. This is a new methodology that can be used to obtain the proper fracture gradient value.
2.2. Fracture gradient calculation (Well 1, 3, and 5) with total depth up to 4500 m MD. These fields
structure is a four-way dip horst-anticline closure structure with
At initial, the overburden pressure and pore pressure were trending NW-SE with the major E-W lateral strike-slip fault. These
calculated before modeling fracture gradient. Pore pressure was fields have the typical stratigraphy which contains 15 formations
calculated from mud logging data by using d-exponent based on formed in Late Permian until recent age which shown in Fig. 2.
modified Eaton's equation (Stephanie, 2013), and gamma ray, re- Field X is comprised by four dominant lithology; claystone,
sistivity, and sonic log data. Yet, the overburden pressure was limestone, sandstone, and shale. Shale is basically a sedimentary
calculated from neutron and density log. rock that composed of fine silt and clay. Regardless of its clay
Afterwards, fracture gradient was calculated by following Gulf component, shale cannot be considered as claystone. Claystone is
Coast (GC) constants because there is no available data to de- defined as sedimentary rock that is composed of clay only. Based
termine Poisson's ratio. on formation lithology and depth, each field X well is divided into
5 group which shown in Fig. 3. Claystone lithology is divided into
Ki − GC = − 0.00000000284D2 + 0.00011102903D 2 different groups, group 1 and 3 because there was a dis-
− 0.10621479633 (6) conformity found right after group 3 formed and it is possible to
have different type claystone in group 1 and 3.
Fig. 2. Field X Formation Marker. In this figure, a stratigraphic view of formation is described. The formation has 15 markers that described in Fig. 3.
EMW, ppg
Depth, ft
a=0.5 a=1
Fig. 3. Group Classification of field X. In this figure, markers from Fig. 2 are clas-
b=0 b=0.2
sified based on each lithology type.
constraint constraint
Averaging Data
(if only the depth contains FIT data)
Fig. 4. A proposed fracture gradient prediction modeling. This figure describe the Fig. 6. Fracture gradient plot before correction. In this figure, it is shown that the
proposed methodology for predicting fracture gradient with calibration on LOT, FIT, FG by Matthew–Kelly and FG by Eaton do not give proper FG curve as the FIT has
and logging data. higher value than calculated FG by both methods.
B.T.H. Marbun et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 135 (2015) 261–267 265
right side. The example result is shown in Fig. 5. rather than FIT data as match point, because LOT data provide
The determination of fracture gradient was performed by in- valuable information to determine the minimum fracture pres-
putting a- and b- constants until the fracture curve reaches both sure. However, for any group which only contain FIT data, the
minimum and maximum constraint. By assuming that the field is a actual minimum value will lie along between FIT and overburden
strike-slip fault regime, the minimum constraint of fracture curve stress which resulting enormous minimum value possibilities and
are FIT or LOT value, and the maximum constraint is overburden lead to error. To minimize the error possibility given by FIT value,
the final value of fracture pressure is assumed equal with the
pressure. LOT data is preferred to be used as minimum constraint
averaging value from maximum and minimum curves. Afterwards,
Pressure Gradient, ppg
new constants of stress ratio and Poisson's ratio were calculated
following fracture gradient and plotted as a function of depth. A
verification of fracture gradient was performed in other wells
which have the similar geological characteristic to generate one
value for a- and b- constants.
3. Study result
Matthew-Kelly
Eaton
Fig. 13. Final corrected constants Poisson's ratio. This figure shows the corrected
Poisson's ratio which has already calibrated the FIT and LOT values.
Table 1
Value of C1, C2, and C3 constants for each model.
The final result of stress ratio and Poisson's ratio as a function PR = C1 D2 + C2 D + C3 (11)
of depth is shown by Figs. 12 and 13. The result show big differ-
ences in the shallow depth and deeper depth of corrected Mat- The data is to be used to generate constant value (C1, C2, and
thew–Kelly stress ration and Poisson's ratio with Matthew–Kelly C3) is data from Figs. 12 and 13 of corrected Matthew–Kelly stress
stress ration and Poisson's ratio from Gulf Coast which is gener- ratio and Poison's ratio. The result of constant value (C1, C2, and C3)
ated using Eqs. (6) and (7). is shown in Table 1.
B.T.H. Marbun et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 135 (2015) 261–267 267
value, 5 data points are used which is shown in Table 2 for each
model. This analysis was performed by measuring and examining
the strength and direction of two variables. The correlation coef-
ficient value must be between 1 and þ1. If the correlation value
is approaching 0, those two variables are independent or there is
no association between those two variables. Positive correlation
value shows that as one variable value increases, another variable
value also increases, and vice versa (Wikipedia).
The result shows that correlation value between b-constant
value and C1, C2, and C3 in Matthew–Kelly's function obtain values
approach 71 which indicate that those constants tend to move
together. In this case, positive correlation is found in C1- and
Fig. 14. Plot between b-constant values with lithology group. C3-constant and negative correlation is found in C2-constant.
Meanwhile, the b-constant value in Eaton's model tend to move
Table 2 together with C3-constant rather with C1- and C2-constant
The final a- and b-constant for each model and lithology group. (Table 3).
a b 4. Conclusions
1 Matthew–Kelly 0.2 0.85
Eaton 0.4 0.65
An effective method to predict fracture gradient has been de-
2 Matthew–Kelly 1 0.04 veloped in this study. Specific conclusions are as follows:
Eaton 1 0
3 Matthew–Kelly 1 0.0425 a. This method is effective to be applied in wells without LOT
Eaton 1 0.005
data. Thus, empirical value of the constants could be de-
4 Matthew–Kelly 1 0.115
Eaton 1 0.115 termined from FIT data.
5 Matthew–Kelly 1 0.075 b. This method is effective to be applied in formation with var-
Eaton 1 0.07 ious lithology because of the constants could be adjusted fol-
lowing the lithology properties.
c. b-correction constant show a significant change due to geo-
Table 3
Correlation table between b-constant towards C1, C2, and C3 constants.
logical character variation, especially in field lithology. a-cor-
rection constant value not show significant change due to
Model Model's constant Correlation value of b-constant towards geological character variation.
C1 C2 C3