Question

How do faults affect oil seepage?

Answer 1

Oil seepage are the natural flow of oil or other hydrocarbon from the ground through cracks. Some are natural and some are man made.

Now, the fault will affect the seepage field and stress field of the formation, which leads to the deformation and destruction of the formation. Therefore, more casing damage wells are found around the fault. A closed fault will obstruct the flow path of the fluid in the formation, resulting in the independence of the seepage and stress characteristics on both sides of the fault. The pore pressure on the injection side (from where the oil seepage) of fault are higher than that of production side (the origin of oil seep) which will then lead to extremel shear stresses.

These faults may act like a stop to the free oil flow beneath the surface.