Field Simulator Well Placement Optimization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Mature oil and gas fields become increasingly complex to manage effectively, with traditional methods requiring excessive calculation time to identify optimal drill locations for new wells, resulting in inefficient production optimization.
Innovation Solution
A method utilizing a field simulator to predict well-by-well production, determining non-overlapping drainage areas for new wells, and applying heuristic and optimization techniques to reduce the number of scenarios, thereby minimizing calculation time and optimizing production parameters.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If traditional meshed field simulator is used to determine production for each possible scenario, then production optimization accuracy is improved, but calculation time becomes excessive
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the vast scenario space by first determining drainage areas for existing wells, then identifying candidate locations for new wells based on non-overlapping drainage criteria. This segmentation reduces billions of possible scenarios to a manageable subset of candidate scenarios that require detailed simulation analysis.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary actions by using heuristic rules to pre-screen and identify candidate well locations before conducting detailed production simulations. This preliminary filtering based on drainage area non-overlap criteria eliminates obviously suboptimal scenarios, allowing focused computational resources on promising candidates.
2Loss of time
If the number of candidate new wells is reduced based on non-overlapping drainage areas, then calculation time is reduced, but the risk of missing optimal locations increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs dynamic optimization techniques including genetic algorithms and simulated annealing to iteratively search and refine well location configurations. These dynamic methods can escape local optima and explore the solution space adaptively, ensuring that the reduced candidate set still contains the global optimum with high probability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent incorporates feedback mechanisms where production simulation results from candidate scenarios feed back into the optimization process. The gain function evaluation provides feedback that guides the search algorithm to refine and adjust well locations, progressively improving the solution while maintaining computational efficiency.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method of improving the production of a mature gas or oil field, said field comprising a plurality of existing wells, said method comprising: - providing a field simulator capable of predicting a production of said field in function of a given scenario, a scenario being a set of data comprising production parameters of the existing wells and, the case may be, location and production parameters of one or more new wells, - determining drainage areas of said existing wells using the field simulator, - determining locations of candidate new wells such that drainage areas of said candidate new wells, determined using the field simulator, do not overlap with the drainage areas of the existing wells, - optimizing the value of a gain function which depends on the field production by determining a set of wells out of a plurality of sets of wells, which optimize the value of said gain function, each set of wells of said plurality of sets of wells comprising the existing wells and new wells selected among the candidate new wells.