Publications

Omission of wellbore block for computational efficiency in big hill strategic petroleum reserve model

Park, B.Y.; Herrick, Courtney G.

Oil leaks were found in two wellbores of the Big Hill Strategic Petroleum Reserve site. According to the field observations, two instances of casing damage occurred at the depth of the interbed between the caprock bottom and salt top. A three-dimensional finite element model, which contains wellbore blocks at the center of the caverns and allows each cavern to be configured individually, was constructed to investigate the wellbore damage mechanism. The causes of the damaged casing segments are a result of vertical and horizontal movements of salt dome top. To assess how much the wellbore impedes the movement of the salt top, a comparison of the analyses' results from meshes with and without the wellbore blocks was performed. This paper shows models that omit the wellbore blocks could be used for as an acceptable simplified simulation of Strategic Petroleum Reserve sites.