SBIR Phase I: A Tool for In-situ Stress Measurement in Deep Downhole Environments

Award ID: 2126639

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to improve safety and economics of subsurface operations, such as drilling, stimulation, production, and injection, associated with geological carbon sequestration and production of geothermal heat and fossil fuels from subsurface rock formations. These operations can affect personnel safety, loss of capital, significant damage to the environment, and increase emission of greenhouse gases. To optimize subsurface operations, knowledge of the state of stress in rock formations is essential. Failure to construct reasonably accurate stress models costs the oil and gas industry several billions of dollars annually. However, determination of in-situ stresses is one of the major challenges in the subsurface engineering and currently no technology directly measures these stressees in deep formations. This project advances a tool to measure these stresses directly. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to design and develop a robust an innovative downhole tool for direct measurement of all stress components and the stress orientation in deep wells with any well trajectories. The objectives of the Phase I research study include: 1) Develop analytical and numerical solutions to accurately obtain far-field stresses from near-wellbore stresses. 2) Design and render the tool and all its components for borehole sizes range 7 to 12 . 3) Develop numerical modeling and simulation of different downhole conditions. 4) Design the mechanical, hydraulic, and electrical components, materials, and sensors/transducers and preparation for prototyping. The proposed tool has a novel modular design for wireline, drill-pipe and coil tubing applicable to vertical, deviated, and horizontal wells. This measurement can be repeated as needed to determine the full stress tensor. The technology is automatically operated from the surface. The exact position and orientation of the tool is determined by an assembly and magnetometer, respectively. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Anna Brady-Estevez