Abstract
The characteristics of seepage capability and rock strain during reservoir depletion are important for reservoir recovery, which would significantly influence production strategy optimization. The Cretaceous deep natural gas reservoirs in Keshen Gasfield in Tarim Basin are mainly buried over 5000 m, featuring with ultra-low permeability, developed natural fractures and complex in-situ stress states. However, there is no comprehensive study on the variation of mechanical properties and seepage capability of this gas reservoir under in-situ stress conditions and most studies on stress-sensitivity are conducted under conventional triaxial or uniaxial stress conditions, which cannot truly represent in-situ stress environment. In this work, Cretaceous tight sandstone in Keshen Gasfield was tested under true-triaxial stresses conditions by an advanced geophysical imaging true-triaxial testing system to study the stress-sensitivity and anisotropy of rock stress-strain behavior, porosity and permeability.
Four groups of sandstone samples are prepared as the size of 80mm×80mm×80mm, three of which are artificially fractured with different angle (0°,15°，30°) to simulate hydraulic fracturing. The test results corresponding to different samples are compared to further reveal the influence of the fracture angle on rock mechanical properties and seepage capability. The samples are in elastic strain during reservoir depletion, showing an apparent correlation with fracture angles. The porosity decreases linearly with stress loading, where the decrease rate of effective porosity of fracture samples is significantly higher than that of intact samples. The permeabilities decrease exponentially and show significant anisotropy in different principal stress directions, especially in σH direction.
The mechanical properties and seepage capability of deep tight sandstone are successfully tested under true-triaxial stresses conditions in this work, which reveals the stress-sensitivity of anisotropic permeability, porosity and stress-strain behavior during gas production. The testing results proposed in this paper provides an innovative method to analyse rock mechanical and petrophysical properties and has profound significance on exploration and development of tight gas reservoir.
