Geophysics SIG Meeting – May (Online)

PESGB members can register free of charge via the membership platform

If you are interested in becoming a member of PESGB please visit: https://www.ges-gb.org.uk/membership/

Speaker: Tim Wynn – TRACS International Ltd

Topic: Geomechanics – What’s it to you?

Abstract
Geomechanics is a subject that has been around for many decades but has only recently gained wider awareness within the subsurface energy community, principally through shale gas fracturing, CCUS studies and geothermal projects. Any human activity that influences the subsurface such as drilling wells, oil production, CO2 injection or geothermal projects has the potential to influence the rock parameters and or stress state and result in a variety of effects. For example, high mud weights during drilling may lead to tensile failure, mud losses and a well control incident. Reservoir depletion may lead to significant reservoir compaction and subsidence with disruption of well completions or surface facilities. CO2 injection may lead to reservoir pressurisation to the point of hydraulic fracturing of the reservoir, caprock failure or fault reactivation.

However, geomechanics also overlaps with more familiar activities such as seismic inversion, well abandonment or pore pressure prediction. Therefore, some of you may have heard about geomechanics but don’t know much else, some may know a lot about one or two aspects but not the whole picture and others may wonder what all the fuss is about…. This talk aims to give a brief introduction to the key elements of what geomechanics is, how geomechanics parameters can be measured or estimated and when geomechanics analyses or modelling can be used usefully to assess the operating ranges of a variety of activities in the energy industry.

Tim Wynn – TRACS International Ltd

Tim is the Principal Geologist and Geomechanics Specialist at TRACS International. He has 29 years of experience in geological and geomechanical aspects of reservoir characterisation and modelling, project management, asset evaluations (CPRs, Audits) and training aimed at supporting decision making in energy companies. Upon completion of his PhD at Imperial College in 1994, Tim worked as a Structural Geologist with GeoScience Limited for 6 years working on radioactive waste disposal and hydrocarbon industry projects. He moved to ICE Energy Ltd in 2000-2001 and focussed on wellbore geomechanics. ICE Energy was later acquired by TRACS International in 2001.

Tim has considerable experience of characterising and modelling clastic, carbonate and basement reservoirs in the North Sea, Middle East, Europe, Russia, South America, Africa, and SE Asia. He has a particular interest in characterising and modelling fractured reservoirs and in the application of geomechanics to wellbore stability, reservoir stimulation and reservoir management. He has applied these skills to hydrocarbon and Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) projects and more recently on geothermal projects. He has published technical papers on many of these topics and he is also a Technical Paper Reviewer for the Geological Society, London, SPE, EAGE and AAPG and is also an Editorial Board member of Petroleum Geoscience.