Knowledge of the distribution of the rock mechanical properties along the depth of the wells is an important task for many applications related to reservoir geomechanics. Such these applications are wellbore stability analysis, hydraulic fracturing, reservoir compaction and subsidence, sand production, and fault reactivation. A major challenge with determining the rock mechanical properties is that they are not directly measured at the wellbore. They can be only sampled at well location using rock testing. Furthermore, the core analysis provides discrete data measurements for specific depth as well as it is often available only for a few wells in a field of interest. This study presents a methodology to generate synthetic-geomechanical well logs for the production section of the Buzurgan oil field, located in the south of Iraq, using an artificial neural network. An issue with the area of study is that shear wave velocities and pore pressure measurements in some wells are missing or incomplete possibly for cost and time-saving purposes. The unavailability of these data can potentially create inaccuracies in reservoir characterization n and production management. To overcome these challenges, this study presents two developed models for estimating the shear wave velocity and pore pressure using ANN techniques. The input parameters are conventional well logs including compressional wave, bulk density, and gamma-ray. Also, this study presents a construction of 1-D mechanical earth model for the production section of Buzurgan oil field which can be used for optimizing the selected mud weights with less wellbore problems (less nonproductive time. The results showed that artificial neural network is a powerful tool in determining the shear wave velocity and formation pore pressure using conventional well logs. The constructed 1D MEM revealed a high matching between the predicted wellbore instabilities and the actual wellbore failures that were observed by the caliper log. The majority of borehole enlargements can be attributed to the formation shear failures due to an inadequate selection of mud weights while drilling. Hence, this study presents optimum mud weights (1.3 to 1.35 g/cc) that can be used to drill new wells in the Buzurgan oil field with less expected drilling problems.
Reservoir Geomechanics
