Life Cycle of Oil and Gas Fields in the Mississippi River Delta: A Review

Oil and gas (O&G) activity has been pervasive in the Mississippi River Delta (MRD). Here we review the life cycle of O&G fields in the MRD focusing on the production history and resulting environmental impacts and show how cumulative impacts affect coastal ecosystems. Individual fields can last 40–60 years and most wells are in the final stages of production. Production increased rapidly reaching a peak around 1970 and then declined. Produced water lagged O&G and was generally higher during declining O&G production, making up about 70% of total liquids. Much of the wetland loss in the delta is associated with O&G activities. These have contributed in three major ways to wetland loss including alteration of surface hydrology, induced subsidence due to fluids removal and fault activation, and toxic stress due to spilled oil and produced water. Changes in surface hydrology are related to canal dredging and spoil placement. As canal density increases, the density of natural channels decreases. Interconnected canal networks often lead to saltwater intrusion. Spoil banks block natural overland flow affecting exchange of water, sediments, chemicals, and organisms. Lower wetland productivity and reduced sediment input leads to enhanced surficial subsidence. Spoil banks are not permanent but subside and compact over time and many spoil banks no longer have subaerial expression. Fluid withdrawal from O&G formations leads to induced subsidence and fault activation. Formation pore pressure decreases, which lowers the lateral confining stress acting in the formation due to poroelastic coupling between pore pressure and stress. This promotes normal faulting in an extensional geological environment like the MRD, which causes surface subsidence in the vicinity of the faults. Induced reservoir compaction results in a reduction of reservoir thickness. Induced subsidence occurs in two phases especially when production rate is high. The first phase is compaction of the reservoir itself while the second phase is caused by a slow drainage of pore pressure in bounding shales that induces time-delayed subsidence associated with shale compaction. This second phase can continue for decades, even after most O&G has been produced, resulting in subsidence over much of an oil field that can be greater than surface subsidence due to altered hydrology. Produced water is water brought to the surface during O&G extraction and an estimated 2 million barrels per day were discharged into Louisiana coastal wetlands and waters from nearly 700 sites. This water is a mixture of either liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons, high salinity (up to 300 ppt) water, dissolved and suspended solids such as sand or silt, and injected fluids and additives associated with exploration and production activities and it is toxic to many estuarine organisms including vegetation and fauna. Spilled oil has lethal and sub-lethal effects on a wide range of estuarine organisms. The cumulative effect of alterations in surface hydrology, induced subsidence, and toxins interact such that overall impacts are enhanced. Restoration of coastal wetlands degraded by O&G activities should be informed by these impacts

Growth of borehole breakouts with time after drilling: Implications for state of stress, NanTroSEIZE transect, SW Japan

Resistivity at the bit tools typically provide images of wellbore breakouts only a few minutes after the hole is drilled. In certain cases images are taken tens of minutes to days after drilling of the borehole. The sonic caliper can also image borehole geometry. We present four examples comparing imaging a few minutes after drilling to imaging from about 30 min to 3 days after drilling. In all cases the borehole breakouts widen with time. The tendency to widen with time is most pronounced within a few hundred meters below the seafloor (mbsf), but may occur at depths greater than 600 mbsf. In one example the widening may be due to reduced borehole fluid pressure that would enhance borehole failure. In the three other cases, significant decreases in fluid pressure during temporal evolution of breakouts are unlikely. The latter examples may be explained by time-dependent failure of porous sediments that are in an overconsolidated state due to drilling of the borehole. This time-dependent failure could be a consequence of dilational deformation, decrease of pore fluid pressure, and maintenance of sediment strength until migrating pore fluids weaken shear surfaces and allow spallation into the borehole. Breakout orientations, and thus estimates of stress orientations, remain consistent during widening in all four cases. In vertical boreholes, breakouts wider than those initially estimated by resistivity imaging would result in higher estimates of horizontal stress magnitudes. Because the vertical overburden stress is fixed, higher estimated horizontal stresses would favor strike-slip or thrust faulting over normal faulting

Distribution of stress state in the Nankai subduction zone, southwest Japan and a comparison with Japan Trench

To better understand the distribution of three dimensional stress states in the Nankai subduction zone, southwest Japan, we review various stress-related investigations carried out in the first and second stage expeditions of the Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (NanTroSEIZE) by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) and compile the stress data. Overall, the maximum principal stress ?1 in the shallower levels (<~1km) is vertical from near the center of forearc basin to near the trench and; the maximum horizontal stress SHmax (interpreted to be the intermediate principal stress ?2) is generally parallel to the plate convergence vector. The exception to this generalization occurs along the shelf edge of the Nankai margin where SHmax is along strike rather than parallel to the plate convergence vector. Reorientation of the principal stresses at deeper levels (e.g., >~1km below seafloor or in underlying accretionary prism) with ?1 becoming horizontal is also suggested at all deeper drilling sites. We also make a comparison of the stress state in the hanging wall of the frontal plate-interface between Site C0006 in the Nankai and Site C0019 in the Japan Trench subduction zone drilled after the 2011 Mw9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake. In the Japan Trench, the comparison between stress state before and after the 2011 mega-earthquake shows that the stress changed from compression before the earthquake to extension after the earthquake. As a result of the comparison between the Nankai Trough and Japan Trench, a similar current stress state with trench parallel extension was recognized at both C0006 and C0019 sites. Hypothetically, this may indicate that in Nankai Trough it is still in an early stage of the interseismic cycle of a great earthquake which occurs on the décollement and propagates to the toe (around site C0006)