Fault sealing and fluid contact control in Gullfaks Sør

Abstract

In subsurface reservoirs, understanding the fault sealing capacity is important to predict the amount of hydrocarbons present in the reservoirs. Some earlier literature has emphasized using shale gouge ratio (SGR) to predict the sealing capacity. Yielding-diagrams where buoyancy pressures are plotted against SGR have shown a correlation where increased pressures result in increased SGR. In this project, diagrams where SGR of one fault has been plotted against displacement and shows a correlation where increased SGR results in increased displacement. This finding might imply that there are other important contributing properties important for fault sealing and that previously the importance of clay content might have been overemphasized.