Determining the 3-D fracture structure in the Geysers geothermal reservoir
The bulk of the steam at the Geysers geothermal field is produced from fractures in a relatively impermeable graywacke massif which has been heated by an underlying felsite intrusion. The largest of these fractures are steeply dipping right lateral strike-slip faults which are subparallel to the NW striking Collayomi and Mercuryville faults which form the NE and SW boundaries of the known reservoir. Where the graywacke source rock outcrops at the surface it is highly sheared and fractured over a wide range of scale lengths. Boreholes drilled into the reservoir rock encounter distinct ''steam entries'' at which the well head pressure jumps from a few to more than one hundred psi. This observation that steam is produced from a relatively small number of major fractures has persuaded some analysts to use the Warren and Root (1963) dual porosity model for reservoir simulation purposes. The largest fractures in this model are arranged in a regular 3-D array which partitions the reservoir into cubic ''matrix'' blocks. The net storage and transport contribution of all the smaller fractures in the reservoir are lumped into average values for the porosity and permeability of these matrix blocks which then feed the large fractures. Recent improvements of this model largely focus on a more accurate representation of the transport from matrix to fractures (e.g. Pruess et al., 1983; Ziminerman et al., 1992), but the basic geometry is rarely questioned. However, it has long been recognized that steam entries often occur in clusters separated by large intervals of unproductive rock (Thomas et al., 1981). Such clustering of fixtures at all scale lengths is one characteristic of self-similar distributions in which the fracture distribution is scale-independent. Recent studies of the geometry of fracture networks both in the laboratory and in the field are finding that such patterns are self-similar and can be best described using fractal geometry. Theoretical simulations of fracture development in heterogeneous media also produce fractal patterns. However, a physical interpretation of the mechanics which produce the observed fractal geometry remains an active area of current research. Two hypotheses for the physical cause of self-similarity are the Laplacian growth of fractures in a self-organized critical stress field, and the evolution of percolation clusters in a random medium. Each predicts a different, fractal dimension. The more important questions from a reservoir engineering point of view are: (1) is the network of fractures in the Geysers reservoir fractal and if so over what range of fracture sizes is the self-similarity observed and what is its fractal dimension, and (2) do the conventional dual porosity numerical simulation schemes provide an adequate description of flow and heat mining at the Geysers? Other papers in this volume by Acuna, Ershaghi, and Yortsos (1992) and Mukhopodhyoy and Sahimi (1992) address the second question. The primary objective of this paper is to try to answer the first. Toward this goal we have mapped fracture patterns in surface exposures of the graywacke source rock at the outcrop scale (meters), at the road-cut scale (tens of meters) and at the regional scale (kilometers). We have also examined cores collected at depth from the graywacke reservoir rocks, and analyzed drilling logs making use of the pattern of steam entries as well as the fluctuations in drilling rate.
- Research Organization:
- University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 888664
- Report Number(s):
- SGP-TR-141-13; TRN: US200619%%78
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Seventeenth Workshop on Geothermal Reservoir Engineering: Proceedings, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, January 29-31, 1992
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Fracture patterns in graywacke outcrops at The Geysers geothermal field
Hydrothermal factors in porosity evolution and caprock formation at the Geysers steam field, California--insight from the Geysers Coring Project