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A micro-annulus (MA) is defined as a high permeability zone or gap initiating/occurring at the casing-cement and cement-formation interfaces during the wellbore life span. An MA can significantly compromise wellbore integrity by establishing enhanced fluid flow pathways. This study uses a staged finite element approach to simulate wellbore integrity during various loading steps of wellbore operations under downhole conditions. Particular emphasis is placed on the processes of cement poro-elastic property evolution, volume variation, and pore pressure variation as part of the cement hardening step. The resulting state of stress during the life cycle of a typical injection well (i.e. hardening, completion, and injection) is analyzed to assess the onset and evolution of micro-annuli at various interfaces of the composite wellbore system under downhole conditions. The results show that cement shear failure is observed at the casing-cement interface during pressure testing (excessive wellbore pressure); and tensile debonding failure initiates at the cement-formation interface due to cement shrinkage during hardening and injection-related cooling (thermal cycling). Sensitivity analyses considering several parameters show that: (1) the degree of poro-elastic bulk shrinkage has significant implications for both shear and tensile failure initiation – the less the cement shrinks, the less likely the failure initiation is; (2) cement integrity increases with increasing depth; (3) cement pore pressure evolution has significant implications for tensile failure – if cement pore pressure decreases more, higher temperature differences can be sustained before an MA occurs; and (4) cement temperature fluctuations during hardening promote initiation of debonding failure. In summary, the results presented indicate that establishing downhole conditions to quantitatively analyze MA generation is necessary. The results are different compared to laboratory studies without considering/simulating downhole conditions. The knowledge from this study can raise the awareness of predicting and evaluating MA under downhole conditions and can be used to supplement and improve future laboratory experiments.

The advanced tensor based concept of pore pressure-stress coupling is used to provide pre-injection analytical estimates of the maximum sustainable pore pressure change, ΔPc, for fluid injection scenarios into generic anticline geometries. The heterogeneous stress distribution for different prevailing stress regimes in combination with the Young's modulus (E) contrast between the injection layer and the cap rock and the interbedding friction coefficient, μ, may result in large spatial and directional differences of ΔPc. A single value characterizing the cap rock as for horizontal layered injection scenarios is not obtained. It is observed that a higher Young's modulus in the cap rock and/or a weak mechanical coupling between layers amplifies the maximum and minimum ΔPc values in the valley and limb, respectively. These differences in ΔPc imposed by E and μ are further amplified by different stress regimes. The more compressional the stress regime is, the larger the differences between the maximum and minimum ΔPc values become. The results of this study show that, in general compressional stress regimes yield the largest magnitudes of ΔPc and extensional stress regimes provide the lowest values of ΔPc for anticline formations. Yet this conclusion has to be considered with care when folded anticline layers are characterized by flexural slip and the friction coefficient between layers is low, i.e. μ = 0.1. For such cases of weak mechanical coupling, ΔPc magnitudes may range from 0 MPa to 27 MPa, indicating imminent risk of fault reactivation in the cap rock.