  In this paper we discuss a new discretization for the Biot equations. The
discretization treats the coupled system of deformation and flow directly, as
opposed to combining discretizations for the two separate sub-problems. The
coupled discretization has the following key properties, the combination of
which is novel: 1) The variables for the pressure and displacement are
co-located, and are as sparse as possible (e.g. one displacement vector and one
scalar pressure per cell center). 2) With locally computable restrictions on
grid types, the discretization is stable with respect to the limits of
incompressible fluid and small time-steps. 3) No artificial stabilization term
has been introduced. Furthermore, due to the finite volume structure embedded
in the discretization, explicit local expressions for both momentum-balancing
forces as well as mass-conservative fluid fluxes are available.
  We prove stability of the proposed method with respect to all relevant
limits. Together with consistency, this proves convergence of the method.
Finally, we give numerical examples verifying both the analysis and convergence
of the method.
