Section III: Science Technology and Innovation

Title: Production systems optimisation methods for petroleum fields

Author(s): Cheng Seong Khor, Ali Elkamel

Address: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 Chemical Engineering Programme, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar, Malaysia | Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1

Reference: Science,Technology and Sustainability in the Middle East and North Africa pp. 132 - 157

Abstract/Summary: In this review, we survey the widespread use of optimisation or mathematical programming approaches in the upstream sector of the petroleum industry, specifically to problems in the area of 1 production systems design and operations, < (>2 lift gas and production rate allocation and 3 reservoir development, planning, management and optimisation. Early applications have adopted Linear Programming LP alongside heuristics-based methods, but the recent ongoing explosion in computing power and advances in optimisation, simulation and computational techniques have enabled the adoption of increasingly complex models. These formulations include non-linear programming and Mixed-Integer Linear MILP and Non-Linear MINLP programming models. Within these representations, various algorithms and approaches have been employed, for example, metaheuristics such as genetic algorithms to address non-smooth objective functions; techniques for simultaneous decision making in design, planning and scheduling and stochastic programming to handle uncertainty in reservoir information, with the ultimate aim of improving solution quality while reducing computational intensity.

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