A numerical approach for investigation of stress states induced by salt structures

The main oil and gas reserves around the world are found in regions containing evaporitic rocks. Owing to their low porosity and low permeability these rocks provide favorable conditions for hydrocarbon trapping, increasing the probability of success in oil and gas exploration. Salt rocks exhibit time-dependent strain behavior when submitted to deviatoric stresses. This behavior is described by creep constitutive laws based on deformation mechanics. One of the major challenges in modeling stress states in sedimentary basins in the presence of salt structures is to predict the magnitude of stress perturbations around salt bodies. This work presents a geo-mechanical approach to take into account the specific weight variation throughout the lithology and the effects of buoyancy in the resulting forces on the interface salt-body/formation. Modeling is driven by the fact that salt bodies cannot sustain deviatoric stresses. Numerical analyses using the Finite Element Method under plane strain conditions provide the results for the comparison of the methodologies found in the literature with the one proposed by the authors. Two synthetic models with salt dome structures are investigated. The proposed approach provided more realistic stress fields in the vicinity of salt structures.