Jingshou Liu
Wenlong Ding
Shimin Liu
Kouqi Liu
Dadong Liu- 1School of Earth Resources, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China
- 2School of Energy Resources, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China
- 3Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, G3 Center and Energy Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States
- 4Institute of Energy, Peking University, Beijing, China
- 5State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Resources and Prospecting, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, China
Editorial on the Research Topic
Unconventional reservoir geomechanics
Unconventional resources, which can be regarded as an alternative for the conventional resources, have been a hot Research Topic over the past decades. Many countries, including the United States, Russia, Canada, and China, have effectively promoted the exploration and development of shale oil and gas, tight oil and gas and coalbed methane. Despite their great potential, the economic hydrocarbon production from these resources is hampered by our poor understanding of reservoir geology and limited engineering technology. In recent years, considerable progress has been made in the study of Unconventional reservoir geomechanics due to commercial development. Unconventional reservoir geomechanics encompasses the fields of structural geology, petroleum geology, rock mechanics, and petroleum engineering, aiming to solve a wide range of mechanical problems that arise during the exploitation of unconventional resources. Moreover, multiscale geomechanics-based geoengineering method have been employed in laboratories by more and more researchers.
It was a great honor to be invited to serve as the team of Guest Editors for this Research Topic. Upon the opening of this topic, it received a great response from relevant academic communities. This Research Topic collects 15 papers from different disciplines, which helps international readers deepen geological understanding and solve engineering problems through geomechanics. A wide range of research was presented, including geomechanics experiments (e.g., Cheng et al.; Wang et al.; Yang et al.), the prediction of reservoir fracture characterization (e.g., Li et al.; Yang et al.; Mi et al.), the numerical simulation of stress fields (e.g., Feng et al.; Xu et al.) and case studies (e.g., Wang Q et al.; Wang et al.; Xu et al.). The study of reservoir geomechanics is significant for guiding unconventional oil and gas exploration (e.g., stress field simulation, fault sealing evaluation, fracture activity prediction, etc.) and development (e.g., wellbore stability analysis, fracture propagation in hydraulic fracturing, casing damage prediction and protection, etc.).
At present, the exploration and development of oil and gas are moving towards deep and ultradeep reservoirs. In addition, the development of tight unconventional reservoirs is playing an increasingly important role in the oil and gas industry. For example, some wells in the Tarim Basin in China have reached more than 8,000 m, and the ultradeep rocks are in an environment of high temperature, high pressure and high in situ stress. Traditional reservoir geomechanics theory has limitations in guiding the development of deep resources and deep engineering (Xie et al., 2021; Xu et al., 2022). Whether it is the development of ultradeep reservoirs or tight unconventional reservoirs, reservoir geomechanics will play an increasingly critical role (Zoback and Kohli, 2019). With the in-depth development of multidisciplinary intersections, reverse engineering, 3D printing technology, multiphysics field coupling theory, and other methods that have been introduced to reservoir geomechanics, a number of new research results and technologies have emerged. In the future, the development of reservoir geomechanics will focus on the in situ mechanical properties of deep to ultradeep rocks (Xie et al., 2021), evolution of rock mechanical properties and their geomechanical response (Laubach et al., 2019; Liu et al., 2022a), formation mechanism and distribution prediction of unconventional reservoir fractures (Zhang et al., 2021; Li et al., 2022), and development of commercial software for numerical simulation of in situ stress in complex structures (Liu et al., 2017; Liu et al., 2022b; Zou et al., 2022).
Author contributions
All authors listed have made substantial, direct, and intellectual contributions to the work and approved it for publication.
Acknowledgments
We greatly appreciate the time and effort of the reviewers and authors for their contributions to ensure that the papers in this Research Topic are innovative, exclusive, and timely. We acknowledge the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42102156) and the “CUG Scholar” Scientific Research Funds at China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) (Project No. 2022046) for this Research Topic Editorial activities.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
References
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Li, H., Yu, F., Wang, M., Wang, Y., and Liu, Y. (2022). Quantitative prediction of structural fractures in the Paleocene lower Wenchang formation reservoir of the Lufeng Depression. Adv. Geo-Energy Res. 6 (5), 375–387. doi:10.46690/ager.2022.05.03
Liu, J., Chen, P., Xu, K., Yang, H., Liu, H., and Liu, Y. (2022a). Fracture stratigraphy and mechanical stratigraphy in sandstone: A multiscale quantitative analysis. Mar. Petroleum Geol. 145, 105891. doi:10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2022.105891
Liu, J., Ding, W., Yang, H., Wang, R., Yin, S., Li, A., et al. (2017). 3D geomechanical modeling and numerical simulation of in-situ stress fields in shale reservoirs: A case study of the lower cambrian niutitang formation in the cen'gong block, south China. Tectonophysics 712, 663–683. doi:10.1016/j.tecto.2017.06.030
Liu, J., Yang, H., Xu, K., Wang, Z., Liu, X., Cui, L., et al. (2022b). Genetic mechanism of transfer zones in rift basins: Insights from geomechanical models. GSA Bull. 134 (9-10), 2436–2452. doi:10.1130/b36151.1
Xie, H. P., Li, C. B., Gao, M. Z., Zhang, R., Gao, F., and Zhu, J. B. (2021). Conceptualization and preliminary research on deep in situ rock mechanics. Chin. J. Rock Mech. Eng. 40 (2), 217.
Xu, K., Yang, H., Zhang, H., Ju, W., Li, C., Fang, L., et al. (2022). Fracture effectiveness evaluation in ultra-deep reservoirs based on geomechanical method, Kuqa Depression, Tarim Basin, NW China. J. Petroleum Sci. Eng. 215, 110604. doi:10.1016/j.petrol.2022.110604
Zhang, Y., Zeng, L., Luo, Q., Zhu, R., Lyu, W., Liu, D., et al. (2021). Influence of natural fractures on tight oil migration and production: A case study of permian lucaogou formation in jimsar sag, junggar basin, NW China. J. Earth Sci. 32 (4), 927–945. doi:10.1007/s12583-021-1442-y
Zoback, M. D., and Kohli, A. H. (2019). Unconventional reservoir geomechanics. Cambridge, UK, England: Cambridge University Press.
Keywords: reservoir geomechanics, in situ stress, reservoir fracture, rock mechanics, unconventional reservoir
Citation: Liu J, Ding W, Liu S, Liu K and Liu D (2023) Editorial: Unconventional reservoir geomechanics. Front. Earth Sci. 11:1126288. doi: 10.3389/feart.2023.1126288
Received: 17 December 2022; Accepted: 03 January 2023;
Published: 12 January 2023.
Edited and reviewed by:
Derek Keir, University of Southampton, United KingdomCopyright © 2023 Liu, Ding, Liu, Liu and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Jingshou Liu, liujingshou@126.com