April SPE WA Lecture: When, Where and How a Field Scale 4D Geomechanical Model Should be Built?

Analytical approaches have been successfully used for decades to analyse different geomechanical related problems in the oil and gas industry. These approaches are still applicable for most of those problems. However, they may not be suitable for complex environments that the industry is dealing with nowadays. The challenges to develop complex fields urge the industry to have a better understanding and prediction of the behaviour of the reservoir rocks and its overburden layers in a more accurate manner. This can be partially achieved by conducting a more comprehensive type of analysis by means of numerical methods in a wider scale of space and time. We refer to this as 4D geomechanical modelling.

The concept of 4D geomechanical modelling is relatively new in the industry, and there is limited knowledge regarding the applications and advantages of this type of modelling within disciplines other than geomechanics. In this presentation, a summary of the applications of 4D geomechanical modelling and their advantages over the conventional analytical approaches will be presented. Moreover, the techniques and procedures to build and interpret a 4D geomechanical model will be discussed using real case studies.”

Biography of Speaker: Dr. Ahmadreza Younessi Sinaki

“Ahmadreza received his PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Curtin University in 2012. After completing his MSc in Rock Mechanics Engineering in 2006 from Amirkabir University of Technology, he started his career as a Geomechanics Engineer in Schlumberger’s Data and Consulting Services. He was involved with several consulting projects in Iran, India and Malaysia till 2009. He was also trained as a Wireline Field Engineer during his career in Schlumberger. He started his PhD in 2009 focusing on sand production mechanism under true-triaxial stress conditions. During his PhD he was involved with several consultant Geomechanics projects in Australia conducted from Curtin Petroleum Geomechanics Group (CPGG). Ahmadreza joined Baker Hughes Geomechanics team in 2012. Since then he has been both a participant and leader in numerous projects including 1D and 3D geomechanical modeling, wellbore stability analysis, sand production prediction, compaction and subsidence analysis, 4D geomechanical modeling and fault reactivation analysis.”