Coupled geomechanical-thermal simulation for oil sand reservoirs with shale barriers under hot water injection in vertical well-assisted SAGD wells

Mudstone stringers in an oil sand reservoir can significantly affect the propagation of the steam chamber in the process of steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). The micro-fracturing by water injection in strongly heterogeneous oil sands can result in these problems such as hard stringer breakthrough and aggravating heterogeneity. This paper proposed a comprehensive numerical model for conventional SAGD wells and vertical well-assisted SAGD (VWA-SAGD) wells to predict the coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical responses under hot water injection in a typical Karamay oil sand reservoir with two stringers, considering skeleton shear dilation, the ''phase change'' of bitumen, formation heterogeneity, the permeability evolution induced by elastoplastic deformations, and the theory of heat and mass transfer. Major conclusions were drawn that there are three relatively narrow separate transition zones effectively heated around the SAGD wells and vertical well. The vertical well makes about 0.5 MPa increase to the pore pressure of the reservoir embedded with mudstone stringers in vertical directions and rises by about 0.6 MPa for the reservoir pore pressure above the upper stringer to reduce the pore pressure differential along the wellbore. Water injection-induced ultimate stress states can't reach the shear failure line under field operations, so the shear dilation can't be induced. The thermoporoelastic deformation determines whole reservoir deformation. The reservoir between the two stringers contributes to most of the caprock uplift. The VWA-SAGD technique can improve the porosity by about 1% in the whole vertical direction and reduce the anisotropy of porosity along the wellbore, which is beneficial to the uniform and fast propagation of the steam chamber in subsequent preheating and production stages. These findings can be employed to accurately predict the temperature, pore pressure, stress/displacement, and porosity evolutions for the field engineers to properly evaluate the uplift of reservoir and caprock, oil output changes, and heat utilization efficiency. •Comprehensive numerical models for conventional SAGD and VWA-SAGD were proposed.•Coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical responses under hot water injection were predicted.•Case study in a typical Karamay oil sand reservoir with two stringers was discussed.•Temporal and spatial distributions of temperature, stress and deformation were calculated.•The effect of VWA-SAGD was compared with SAGD to confirm the high