Impact of Fracturing Caused by Cold Water Reinjection in Geothermal Reservoir on Early Cold Water Breakthrough in Production Wells

Abstract

Cold water injection into a reservoir, can cause reservoir rock fracturing, which in turn, can induce early cold water breakthrough into a production well. The objective of this work is to investigate hydraulic fracture propagation in liquid-dominated geothermal reservoir and to establish how it effects cold water breakthrough in production wells. For this purpose, a 2D reservoir simulator describing fully-coupled interaction among fluid flow, thermal flow, geomechanical reservoir behavior and fracture growth was used in this study.
The paper explains how to estimate fracturing pressure change due to cold water injection. It also discusses how to predict orientation/re-orientation of hydraulic fracture propagating from an injector.