Compaction and Fluid—Rock Interaction in Chalk Insight from Modelling and Data at Pore-, Core-, and Field-Scale

Abstract

Water weakening is a phenomenon that is observed in high porosity chalk formations. The rock interacts with ions in injected water and additional deformation occurs. This important effect needs to be taken into account when modelling the water flooding of these reservoirs. The models used on field scale are simple and only model the effect as a change in water saturation. In this paper, we argue that the water weakening effect can to a large extend be understood as a combination of changes in water activity, surface charge and chemical dissolution. We apply the de Waal model to analyse compaction experiments, and to extract the additional deformation induced by the chemical interaction between the injected water and the rock. The chemical changes are studied on a field scale using potential flow models. On a field scale, we show that the dissolution/precipitation mechanisms studied in the lab will propagate at a much lower speed and mainly affect compaction near the well region and close to the temperature front. Changes in surface charge travel much faster in the reservoir and might be an important contributor to the observed water weakening effect. We also discuss how mineralogical variations impacts compaction.