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Stress and Deformation in Plastic Mudrocks Overturning in Front of Advancing Salt Sheets; Implications for System Kinematics and Drilling

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Abstract

We use evolutionary poromechanical models to study stress and deformation in sediments that are deposited above a salt sheet, then are upturned in front of salt and eventually buried below salt. Sediments in our model represent rocks that are able to deform plastically. We find that high differential stresses develop, leading to shear failure of sediments as they are upturned in front of salt. However, we show that strength and failure evolve together with the salt system because the mode of loading from the advancing salt changes as sediments fold below salt. We also show that the path of salt flow is affected by the continuous changes in sediment strength. We discuss how the present-day geometry of the salt base may provide evidence of the level of shear below salt. We show that our forward modeling approach can help evaluate mechanical trap integrity by identifying areas that experienced elevated shear during earlier stages of the evolutionary process. Overall, our poromechanical models allow us to correlate kinematics of salt emplacement with the stress history of sediments and identify potential drilling hazards.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our anonymous reviewer for their very insightful suggestions. The project was funded by the Applied Geodynamics Laboratory consortium (AGL) and the GeoFluids consortium at The University of Texas at Austin (UT GeoFluids). AGL is supported by the following companies: Anadarko, Aramco Services, BHP Billiton, BP, CGG, Chevron, Condor, Ecopetrol, EMGS, ENI, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Hess, ION/GXT, Midland Valley Exploration, Murphy, Nexen Energy, Noble, Petrobras, Petronas, PGS, Repsol, Rockfield, Shell, SpectrumGeo, Talos Energy, TGS, Total, WesternGeco, Woodside. UT GeoFluids is supported by the following companies: Anadarko, BHP Billiton, BP, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, ExxonMobil, Hess, Pemex, Repsol, Shell, and Equinor. The authors received additional support from the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 10100 Burnet Road, Building PRC-130, Austin, TX, 78758, USA

    Maria A. Nikolinakou

  2. Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin, 10100 Burnet Road, Building PRC-130, Austin, TX, 78758, USA

    Mahdi Heidari & Michael R. Hudec

  3. Department of Geological Sciences and Institute for Geophysics, Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station C1100, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    Peter B. Flemings

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  1. Maria A. Nikolinakou
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Correspondence to Maria A. Nikolinakou.

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Maria A. Nikolinakou, Mahdi Heidari and Michael R. Hudec have received research funds from member companies of the Applied Geodynamics Laboratory consortium (Anadarko, Aramco Services, BHP Billiton, BP, CGG, Chevron, Condor, Ecopetrol, EMGS, ENI, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Hess, ION/GXT, Midland Valley Exploration, Murphy, Nexen Energy, Noble, Petrobras, Petronas, PGS, Repsol, Rockfield, Shell, SpectrumGeo, Talos Energy, TGS, Total, WesternGeco, Woodside). Maria A. Nikolinakou, Mahdi Heidari and Peter B. Flemings have received research funds from the GeoFluids consortium (Anadarko, BHP Billiton, BP, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, ExxonMobil, Hess, Pemex, Repsol, Shell, and Equinor). Maria A Nikolinakou is a member of the Executive Committee of ARMA.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

See Fig. 8.

Fig. 8
figure 8

Kinematic evolution of base model

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Appendix 2

See Figs. 9 and 10, Tables 1 and 2.

Fig. 9
figure 9

Basic principles of critical state model SR3 [schematic after Gao et al. (2018)], plotted using material input for present study (Table 2). a Mean effective stress (σ′m) vs. deviatoric stress (q) space. Yield surface (gray) evolves with increase in preconsolidation stress. Critical state line (red) defines the maximum deviatoric (shear) stress, qf, that the material can support for a given mean effective stress. The ratio of shear to mean effective stress ( η = q/σ′m) is constant along the uniaxial compression path (dashed black line) as well as the critical state line. Iso-porosity curves (green, purple and cyan) represent all combinations of mean effective stress and shear stress that compress to a given value of porosity. b Mean effective stress (σ′m) vs. porosity (n). Increasing the shear ratio (η) from uniaxial (black curve) to critical state (red curve) leads to lower porosity for the same mean effective stress. A curved iso-porosity line in a (e.g., n = 0.23, purple curve) corresponds to a horizontal line in b (purple line at n = 0.23). As the shear stress ratio increases from uniaxial to critical state, the mean effective stress decreases, illustrating the role of shear-induced compression and the interrelation between mean effective stress, shear stress and porosity (color figure online)

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Fig. 10
figure 10

Input hardening properties for SR3 material model

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Appendix 3

See Tables 3 and 4.

Table 4 Metric (SI) unit to English unit conversion
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Nikolinakou, M.A., Heidari, M., Hudec, M.R. et al. Stress and Deformation in Plastic Mudrocks Overturning in Front of Advancing Salt Sheets; Implications for System Kinematics and Drilling. Rock Mech Rock Eng 52, 5181–5194 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-019-01852-2

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