ABSTRACT

Petroleum engineering provides many opportunities to apply the concepts and methods of rock mechanics (Charlez 1997; Fjaer et al. 2008). A few of these applications are reviewed in this paper, with an emphasis on new advances and/or unresolved issues. The first topic discussed is the incorporation of the effects of the intermediate principal stress into wellbore stability analysis. Next, two issues related to the modeling of fluid flow in fractured reservoirs are discussed: the effective macroscopic permeability of a fracture network, and the “shape factor” that controls the rate of fluid transfer between the fractures and the matrix blocks. Finally, a brief discussion is given of the governing equations used in coupled geomechanical-flow reservoir simulation.