Introduction to this special section: Geomechanics

The term "geomechanics"means different things to different people. We assert that in the petroleum industry the broad consensus for a definition would probably be something like this: Geomechanics is the discipline that investigates rock mechanical behavior in the subsurface (i.e., at the wellbore wall, the overburden, cap rock, and/or the reservoir) under present-day in-situ stress and pore pressure conditions or those changed through human activity/intervention (e.g., production, injection, stimulation) during the life of a well.