UNIT 1.

2: OVERVIEW UNITS 2,3

UNIT 2: THE TECTONIC STRESS FIELD
 So, with respect to the tectonic stress field, we have to recognize that geologic processes are
responsible for the stress field.

 And it was recognized in the 1930s by a British geologist by the name of E.M. Anderson, that in
general, you could classify the forces, the stress field in the earth, into three major categories.
 He called one category normal faulting.
 Of course, the second category, a more compressive stress state is strike-slip faulting.
 And the most compressive stress state is reverse faulting.
 And what E.M. Anderson did, and his real insight was to recognize that the relative magnitudes
of these three principle stresses are changing in each of these stress fields.
 And the way to keep track of all of this is to keep your eye on the vertical stress in a normal
faulting domain, the vertical stress is the largest of the three principal stresses.
 And if faulting is going to occur, it's going to be an extensional fault, a normal fault, which strikes
in the direction of the maximum horizontal stress and the slip on that fault is in the opposite
direction, in the direction of the minimum horizontal stress. And he called this normal faulting
because he was studying coal mines in the UK, and when the mine would normally hit a fault,
they would find the coal on the other side you know, below them and that would be a normal
fault. Where what's called the hanging wall moves down with respect to the foot wall of the
fault. So, in a normal faulting, stress state, the vertical stress is the maximum stress. The
maximum horizontal stress is the intermediate stress, and the minimum horizontal stress is the
least principal stress.
 By the way, in this class, we will use the convention that compression is positive. A compressive
force is a positive force. Now that is the standard convention in structural geology. It's the
standard convention in rock mechanics. It is not the standard convention in material science,
and when our colleagues in material science are studying the failure of materials, failure is much
more prevalent and prominent when the materials are in extension.
 So, our friends over in engineering use extension as being a positive stress, because that's what's
important to them.
 But what's important to us, is the fact that compression is a positive stress, and the stresses in
the earth are always compressive.
 In fact, the stresses in the earth are always such that the in this case, the minimal horizontal
stress is greater than the pore pressure. Okay, now the pore pressure in an open system as we'll
see is just the weight of the water above a depth of interest. And the least principal stress
always has to be greater than the pore pressure, or the Earth will sort of self hydrofrack.
Because the tensile strength of rocks is very low.
 So, the stresses are always compressive, the stresses are always positive, and the stresses are
always greater than the pore pressure.
 Now the next most compressive stress regime, is strike slip faulting. Now instead of the vertical
stress being maximum, the vertical stress is the intermediate stress, the maximum horizontal
stress is greater than the vertical stress, which is greater than the minimum horizontal stress. If
faulting occurs, strike slip faults are expected to be vertical and oriented about 30 degrees from
the direction of maximum horizontal stress.
 The most compressive stress state is where both horizontal stresses are greater than the vertical
stress. This is called reverse faulting. If faults are active, those faults are dipping at about 30
degrees. They dip in the direction of the maximum horizontal stress. And, if you're a miner
standing on that fault, the hanging wall, the rocks above you, are moving up with respect to
those in the footwall.
 So, we have to, as we begin to study the stress field. We're going to first try to understand the
vertical stress, which is of relevance for the depth we're interested in, and then we're going to
try to understand the relative magnitudes of Shmax and Shmin with respect to the vertical
stress. Are they both smaller than the vertical stress? Are they both greater than the vertical
stress? Is one greater and one less? And this is not an abstract concept.
 As we look at the Central and Eastern United States, an area that's currently being developed in
many states for horizontal drilling and shale gas and, and tight oil development.
 What we can demonstrate through looking at earthquake focal plane mechanisms, and in
chapter 5 we'll talk about what earthquake focal plane mechanisms are and what they teach us
about stress. We can actually characterize the relative stress magnitudes. And what we're doing
is using colour to simply illustrate how relative stress magnitudes change from, say central Texas
all the way to the North-eastern United States, and South-eastern Canada. And the dark blue
colour means that the two horizontal stresses are very low with respect to the vertical stress.
The dark red colour indicates the two horizontal stresses are in excess of the vertical stress.
 So, we go from sort of a normal faulting regime to a strike slip faulting regime. To a reverse
faulting regime, as a result of normal geologic processes.
 And if one were to assume that the stress state was the same in New England, as it was in
Oklahoma, you'd be dead wrong. And so, we have to build the stress model.
 We have to understand what the stresses are. And, of course, once you're in a more restricted
area, then the variation may be, relatively minor.
 But as we think about stressing the earth, and how it affects various processes, we have to
understand where we are, what the current geological processes are in the area.
 But in fact, we don't have to look at this as an academic exercise; we will actually let the data
coming from the wells inform us about what the stresses are.

 So, if you think about the vertical stress being the maximum stress, as it is in the diagram on the
left. And the two horizontal stresses being lower. And we have the pore pressure shown by the
dotted line. You can make some very crude estimates of what stress magnitudes are.
 Okay, the vertical stress goes up in sedimentary basins at about 23 megapascals per kilometre.
That's for a density of rock about 2.3 which is a normal sedimentary rock with something like
15% porosity. That corresponds to one psi per foot in English units and we'll kind of go back and
forth between International units and English units.
 23 megapascals per kilometre, one psi per foot is a typical overburden value.
 If pore pressure is hydrostatic, the pore pressure is going up by ten megapascals per kilometre,
or about 0.44 psi per foot.
 And in a normal faulting regime, the vertical stress, the pore pressure, and then we have the
minimum horizontal stress, and the maximum horizontal stress intermediate between the two
defining the stress state.
 If we are in a strike slip faulting regime, then the minimum horizontal stress is less than the
vertical stress and the maximum horizontal stress is greater than the vertical stress.
 And if we're in a reverse faulting regime, both horizontal stresses can be larger. In fact, there's
not enough room on the graph, both horizontal stresses can actually be quite large, and we'll
talk about that later.
 So just knowing something about the relative stress state, begins to give us a sense of what the
stress magnitudes are.
 We know very little at this point, we know it’s a normal faulting regime, and yet, suddenly we
know that at a depth of well, let's take 3,000 meters or 10,000 feet, we know that the
overburden is you know, three times 23. That's 69 mega pascals. Or, about 10,000 PSI. And the
 two horizontal stresses are less than that, and the mean stress is, you know, something like
maybe 7,000 or 8,000 psi, you know, 50, 60 megapascals. At the same depth, in a compressive
regime, the vertical stress is.
 The question is whether or not the relative stress magnitudes change as a function of depth. And
in general, they don't but it, you know, we have seen instances in which they do. The point of
this is to integrate over, you know integrate these concepts over many different depths. But in
general, you’re going to be interested in a limited range of depths also, and you want to be able
to characterize the relative stresses at those depths.
 Where this is a most concern is when we're using earthquakes to kind of inform us about the
relative stress state, because often, reservoirs are at depths of two, three, four kilometres, and
the earthquakes might be at five or ten kilometres. So, when we're using earthquakes as an
indication for relative stress magnitudes, we have to pay very, very close attention to that
question.
 So, as I was saying, you know at a depth of about 3,000 meters, or 10,000 feet, the stresses and
the mean stresses in a normal vaulting regime are very much lower than the mean stresses in a
reverse vaulting regime, okay?

UNIT 3: PORE PRESSURE AT DEPTH

 Pore pressure seems like an easy thing. You go down into the earth and the pore pressure in the
cracks and pores of the rock represent the weight of the water, fluids above us. Like going down
in the ocean in a submarine. Well, that's often the case, and it's often not the case.
 And here's a case we'll talk about. In this case hydrostatic pore pressure hydrostatic pore
pressure is shown by this line, that's ten megapascal per kilometre 0.44 psi per foot. And what
you can see is that the pore pressure is quite a bit higher at shallow depth, the pore pressure is
hydrostatic. And then the pore pressure is building up as we get deeper and in fact in some
cases, they're actually even losing circulation. Because the mud way is, is not only higher than
the pore pressure, but it's higher than the least principal stress, and you can see that the pore
pressure as it goes up is discontinuous with respect to different reservoirs, which are separated
by different shale units. So, we can go from cases in which the pore pressure is, you know, ten
megapascals per kilometre, .44 psi per foot, it's hydrostatic, very simple, easy to understand.
 Two cases in which it's very complicated and first we need to understand it, and second, we
need to be able to predict it, and we need to be able to, work with the pore pressure in a
quantitative way.

 When the pore pressure is elevated at depth, which is shown schematically here, we see near
hydrostatic pore pressure at shallow depth for our normal, strike slip and reverse faulting cases,
and near lithostatic pore pressure.
 As the pore pressure goes up and becomes close to the overburden, what you see is because the
least principle stress has to be greater than the pore pressure, in a normal faulting regime, the
maximum horizontal stress is greater than the minimum horizontal stress. And the vertical stress
is the maximum. Look what happens. We have almost an isotropic stress state, okay. It's still
normal faulting, vertical stress is still largest, the minimum stress is still bigger than the pore
pressure, but there's very small differences between the three principle stresses.
 Remember I said how different normal faulting and reverse faulting were, when I showed the
hydrostatic pressure version of this same slide, now, when we look at it, we see, a near
hydrostatic stress state here, near isotropic stress state in both cases.
 So as pore pressure gets elevated, the stress field becomes more uniform. The basic principles
are the same. Shmax is still greater than Shmin, which is still greater than Sv.
 But at very elevated pore pressures, as we'll see in chapter 4, the frictional strength of the crust
is so low that it can't sustain big stress differences. And so, the difference between normal
faulting and reverse faulting, which is just huge from a stress magnitude perspective at great
depth when we compare normal faulting and reverse faulting.
 When pore pressures are severely overpressure, when pore pressure is very, very high, that
difference sort of disappears.
 In fact, when we start talking about the world wellbore stability problem, wellbore stability
means getting the stress right and getting the rock strength right in a hydrostatic pressure
regime, because the stress differences can be quite large.
 If you're drilling in an overpressure area, wellbore stability kind of means estimating the pore
pressure right. And, and getting that mud weight, to fit in that mud window, okay?
 So, it's really a very different environment. And so stress and pressure are very closely coupled.