Pore Pressure: Fundamentals, General Ramifications, and Implications for Structural Geology (Revised) Education Course Note Series #4 P. E. Gretener University of Calgary ePSPreface When writing these notes I came face to face with the recent 'paper ex- plosion in the field of abnormal formation fluid pressure. Two points emerge: a) Since the late 1950ties the concepts of fluid pressure and effective stress have had as revolutionary an effect on geology as the idea of plate tectonics. >) In view of the voluminous literature on the subject, the title of these notes: "Pore Pressure..." must be considered presumptuous and misleading. It is now evident that the participants of this course will have to content themselves with what can be no more than the bia~ sed and limited views of one attempting to be a generalist and syn- thesizer. A first edition of such notes (particularly somewhat hastily prepared ones) iovariably contains errors and omissions. I shall be grateful to parti- etpants to point these out to me, Not only will it improve the quality of the notes but it also deaonstrates that one has at least some attentive readers, a fact of no small satisfaction. Calgary, November 1976 P.E.G. Thanks for help, encouragement and above all patience go to my neighbour in office and friend Norm Wardlaw, who acted as midwife in the birth of these notes. Let me hasten to point out that the responsibility for any errors and omissions is solely mine, but without Norm's help there would be many more. Shell Development Company granted permission to use Figures 1.6-455;6;7515316 which were produced while employed by that company. This help is gratefully acknowledged. Figure 4.3-2 1s reproduced with the permission of the European Association of Exploration Geophysicists.1.0 Introduction These notes contain little or no new,original material. They represent an at- tempt to illuminate the importance of pore pressure and particularly abnormal pore pressure to almost all fields of earth science. It seems fair to say that the concepts of pore pressure and effective stress have brought about revolu- tionary changes that are quite comparable with those initiated by the concept of plate tectonics. The present notes are an extension of an earlier version of such a synthesis (Gretener,1969a) ,but even though care has been exercised, in view of the vastness of the literature on the subject they are bound to be in~ complete and biased. Participants are urged to fill gaps and point to short- coming: In this course naturally the emphasis will be on those aspects of pore pressure important to the petroleum geologist, geophysicist and engineer. Occasionally side glimpses are provided to promote the appreciation that pore pressure is not the exclusive domain of the petroleum explorationist. In fact it is reason- able to say that allearth scientists can benefit from these discussions. Chapters 1 and 2 are devoted to a discussion of some of the underlying funda- mentals. Experience has shown that the omission of such an introduction usually leads to confusion at the end of a course. The reason for this is found not so much in the inadequate preparation of the participants but is rather a conse- quence of the varied backgrounds. Terminology in the field is not at all rigid and therefore misunderstandings are possible and almost unavoidable unless time is taken to define some fundamental concepts and the associated vocabulary. Since temperature is important to certain aspects of pore pressure a short sec~ tion on geothermics is included. It deals with temperature, temperature gra- dients and temperature anomalies, both transient and stationary, in the sedi- mentary sequence. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 contain the main message of this course and they will con- stitute the bulk of the short duration presentations. 1.1 Comments on Pressure and Stress * The response of a body to an applied force (load) depends on : the size of the load; the geometry of the body; and the properties of the body. The effect of the geometry of the body can be eliminated by ‘normalizing’ the force, which permits to arrive at a direct relationship between the properties of the body and the normalized force. The normalized force is usually referred to as PRESSURE and is given by : po LU where p is pressure; F is force and A is the area perpendicular to the direction in which the force is acting. Thus pressure is force per unit area and one must beware of the fact that in the older geological literature often no proper distinction is made between force and pressure. ¥For problems in rock mechanics consult: Jaeger and Cook (1969)