Mechanical Modeling and Analysis of Stability Deterioration of Production Well During Marine Hydrate Depressurization Production

Different from oil and gas production,hydrate reservoirs are shallow and unconsolidated,whose mechanical properties deteriorate with hydrate decomposition.Therefore,the formations will undergo significant subsidence during depressurization,which will destroy the original force state of the production well.However,existing research on the stability of oil and gas production wells assumes the formation to be stable,and lacks consideration of the force exerted on the hydrate production well by formation subsidence caused by hydrate decomposition during production.To fill this gap,this paper proposes an analytical method for the dynamic evolution of the stability of hydrate production well considering the effects of hydrate decomposition.Based on the mechanical model of the production well,the basis for stability analysis has been proposed.A multi-field coupling model of the force state of the production well considering the effect of hydrate decomposition and formation subsidence is established,and a solver is developed.The analytical approach is verified by its good agreement with the results from the numerical method.A case study found that the decomposition of hydrate will increase the pulling-down force and reduce the supporting force,which is the main reason for the stability deterioration.The higher the initial hydrate saturation,the larger the reservoir thickness,and the lower the production pressure,the worse the stability or even instability.This work can provide a theoretical reference for the stability maintaining of the production well.

Optimization of Gas Production from Hydrate-Bearing Sediments with Fluctuation Characteristics

As an important source of low-carbon,clean fossil energy,natural gas hydrate plays an important role in improving the global energy consumption structure.Developing the hydrate industry in the South China Sea is important to achieving‘carbon peak and carbon neutrality’goals as soon as possible.Deep-water areas subjected to the action of long-term stress and tectonic movement have developed complex and volatile terrains,and as such,the morphologies of hydrate-bearing sediments(HBSs)fluctuate correspondingly.The key to numerically simulating HBS morphologies is the establishment of the conceptual model,which represents the objective and real description of the actual geological body.However,current numerical simulation models have characterized HBSs into horizontal strata without considering the fluctuation characteristics.Simply representing the HBS as a horizontal element reduces simulation accuracy.Therefore,the commonly used horizontal HBS model and a model considering the HBS’s fluctuation characteristics with the data of the SH2 site in the Shenhu Sea area were first constructed in this paper.Then,their production behaviors were compared,and the huge impact of the fluctuation characteristics on HBS production was determined.On this basis,the key parameters affecting the depressurization production of the fluctuating HBSs were studied and optimized.The research results show that the fluctuation characteristics have an obvious influence on the hydrate production of HBSs by affecting their temperatures and pressure distributions,as well as the transmission of the pressure drop and methane gas discharge.Furthermore,the results show that the gas productivity of fluctuating HBSs was about 5%less than that of horizontal HBSs.By optimizing the depressurization amplitude,well length,and layout location of vertical wells,the productivity of fluctuating HBSs increased by about 56.6%.