NUMERICAL TOOLS TO ESTIMATE THE GEOTHERMAL POTENTIAL FROM PETROLEUM AND GEOTHERMAL MEXICAN FIELDS

Abstract

The suitable estimation of the geothermal potential from Geothermal and Petroleum Systems depends on the reliable knowledge from several geological, geophysical and geochemical parameters. A very important geophysical parameter is the heat flow, which can be used to describe the subsurface temperature profiles from the interest study zones, or vice versa, this allows to establish the areas with high temperatures/heat flow in the subsurface.
In this context, a computer simulator was developed to determine the geothermal potential from Mexican geothermal and petroleum zones. With the main objective to compute the conductive steady state thermal model, through a 2D numerical model of the heat transfer equations, applying the TDMA method (Tri-Diagonal Matrix Algorithm) as numerical solver of the equations. Therefore, 10 geothermal drilled wellbores located in a 4 km2 area inside the La Primavera caldera (LP), Jalisco, México; and 39 petroleum wellbores located in 177 000 km2 area in the northern of Chihuahua, México, were analysed. According to the obtained results from LP, under conductive conditions and steady state, the temperatures estimated are between 450 and 500 °C for a 3 km depth. Whereas, for the sedimentary basin of northern Chihuahua, assuming the same conditions as LP, the temperatures estimated are 175 to 190 °C.