The growing appreciation of the effects of production-induced stress changes on reservoir performance has concentrated the minds of many people on the potential value of using geomechanical modelling to predict and quantify these effects for making life-of-reservoir decisions—relating to compaction mitigation and completing new wells. This paper is concerned with well integrity analyses for compacting reservoirs—focusing specifically on a new area of predictive geomechanical modelling realised using the finite element method. The innovative workflow presented offers significant improvements and, for the first time, captures some of the realities of the construction process. It takes into consideration both the formation and completions by integrating 3D near-wellbore geomechanical modelling with cementing simulations and casing integrity analyses. Specifically, casing eccentricity and cement contamination data are taken from numerical cementing simulations carried out to re-create the conditions in wells with different trajectories. Moreover, formation mechanical properties, pore pressure and stress states from the time of drilling till the end of a simulated production schedule are taken from a calibrated field-scale geomechanical model and subsequently used to create high-resolution 3D near-wellbore geomechanical models. The case study presented in this paper concerns a giant onshore field with multiple stacked reservoirs—containing a variety of hydrocarbons and experiencing different levels of depletion. The main interest is in conducting comprehensive casing and cement integrity assessments—particularly for wells located in compacting reservoir zones. A persistent challenge for geomechanical modelling and prediction is the availability of calibration data. This paper reduces uncertainty by presenting results concerning sensitivity analyses for a variety of completion conditions—including different levels of casing eccentricity, different degrees of cement contamination and different extents of casing corrosion.
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