Explicit Surface Restoring-Decompacting Procedure to Estimate the Hydraulic Fracturing: Case of the Kupferschiefer in the Lubin Region, Poland

Pablo Mejia-Herrera and Jean-Jacques Royer. ( 2012 )
in: Proc. 32nd Gocad Meeting, Nancy

Abstract

The past two decades have seen a rapid development in structural restoration as key to identify favorable target mother rock formations, to reconstitute fluid migration in oil and gas surveys and to predict faults and fracturing in the rock mass. In the case of sediment-hosted ore deposits, the restoration procedure can be used to identify mineralizing fluids pathways and the locations of economic mineral resources. This is usually done using 3D reconstruction and restoration tools considering geometric or geomechanical constrains. Unfortunately, many structural studies do not take account for the effects of compaction when the restoration methods are applied. This work develops a tool to restore a pile of multi-layered sediments accounting for the compaction using surface explicit representation. This methodology is applied to the Lubin Kupferschiefer, SouthernWestern Poland, where the restoring-decompacting procedure allows to appreciate the structural evolution of the system. The restoration of the whole sedimentary pile provides constraints to better understand the hydraulic fracturing stage within the base of Zechstein shales, which occurred during an inversion phase at the Late Cretaceous-Early Paleocene time. This Late Cretaceous up-lifting yields the conditions for hydrothermal recirculation of mineralizing brines explaining the location of Cu (Cu-Fe) sulfides ores in the area. The restoring-decompacting procedure allows to reconstitute the burial, deformation and natural hydro-fracturing history of the basin.

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BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{RUNKJRM18,
 abstract = { The past two decades have seen a rapid development in structural restoration as key to identify favorable target mother rock formations, to reconstitute fluid migration in oil and gas surveys and to predict faults and fracturing in the rock mass. In the case of sediment-hosted ore deposits, the restoration procedure can be used to identify mineralizing fluids pathways and the locations of economic mineral resources. This is usually done using 3D reconstruction and restoration tools considering geometric or geomechanical constrains. Unfortunately, many structural studies do not take account for the effects of compaction when the restoration methods are applied.
This work develops a tool to restore a pile of multi-layered sediments accounting for the compaction using surface explicit representation. This methodology is applied to the Lubin Kupferschiefer, SouthernWestern Poland, where the restoring-decompacting procedure allows to appreciate the structural evolution of the system. The restoration of the whole sedimentary pile provides constraints to better understand the hydraulic fracturing stage within the base of Zechstein shales, which occurred during an inversion phase at the Late Cretaceous-Early Paleocene time. This Late Cretaceous up-lifting yields the conditions for hydrothermal recirculation of mineralizing brines explaining the location of Cu (Cu-Fe) sulfides ores in the area. The restoring-decompacting procedure allows to reconstitute the burial, deformation and natural hydro-fracturing history of the basin. },
 author = { Mejia-Herrera, Pablo AND Royer, Jean-Jacques },
 booktitle = { Proc. 32nd Gocad Meeting },
 location = { Nancy },
 month = { "sep" },
 title = { Explicit Surface Restoring-Decompacting Procedure to Estimate the Hydraulic Fracturing: Case of the Kupferschiefer in the Lubin Region, Poland },
 year = { 2012 }
}