Mastering Reinjection in the Hellisheidi Field, SW-Iceland: A Story of Successes and Failures
- Key words
- reinjection, fractured reservoir, earthquakes, thermo-mechanical coupling.
- Location
- Hellisheidi, Iceland
- Conference
- Stanford Geothermal Workshop
- Year
- 2011
- Session
- Injection
- Language
- English
- Paper number
- Gunnarsson1
Full text
2870KB, opens in a new tab
Abstract
Reinjection has posed a major problem in the operation of the Hellisheidi Power Plant, SW-Iceland. The formation temperature at the originally planned reinjection zone proved to be very hot (>300°C) when injection wells were drilled there.
In order to be able to use that zone for production a new reinjection zone was planned. The new zone has been promising despite problems in operating the new injection wells. The wells are drilled into a fault that is active and injection tests have resulted in swarms of small earthquakes.
The injectivity of the wells in the new reinjection zone is highly dependent on temperature of the reinjected water. This dependence can be explained by thermo-mechanical effects on fractures in the fracture governed reservoir.
Copyright 2011, Stanford Geothermal Program. Readers who download papers from this site should honour the copyright of the original authors, and may not copy or distribute the work further without the permission of the original publisher.