Coupled Basin and Hydro-Mechanical Modeling of Gas Chimney Formation: The SW Barents Sea

Gas chimneys are one of the most intriguing manifestations of the focused fluid flows in sedimentary basins. To predict natural and human-induced fluid leakage, it is essential to understand the mechanism of how fluid flow localizes into conductive chimneys and the chimney dynamics. This work predicts conditions and parameters for chimney formation in two fields in the SW Barents Sea, the Tornerose field and the Snøhvit field in the Hammerfest Basin. The work is based on two types of models, basin modeling and hydro-mechanical modeling of chimney formation. Multi-layer basin models were used to produce the initial conditions for the hydro-mechanical modeling of the relatively fast chimneys propagation process. Using hydro-mechanical models, we determined the thermal, structural, and petrophysical features of the gas chimney formation for the Tornerose field and the Snøhvit field. Our hydro-mechanical model treats the propagation of chimneys through lithological boundaries with strong contrasts. The model reproduces chimneys identified by seismic imaging without pre-defining their locations or geometry. The chimney locations were determined by the steepness of the interface between the reservoir and the caprock, the reservoir thickness, and the compaction length of the strata. We demonstrate that chimneys are highly-permeable leakage pathways. The width and propagation speed of a single chimney strongly depends on the viscosity and permeability of the rock. For the chimneys of the Snøhvit field, the predicted time of formation is about 13 to 40 years for an about 2 km high chimney.