Field/project development

Field-Development Optimization Method Benchmarked, Field Tested

This paper describes a novel distributed quasi-Newton derivative-free optimization method for reservoir-performance-optimization problems.

Well locations superimposed on the perforation-guidance array.
Well locations superimposed on the perforation-guidance array. Initial-guess well location (red well), optimized well locations with DQN, SPMI-B, and PSO-A (green wells, top to bottom respectively), and the locations of the existing wells (black wells). Red cells denote the locations the optimized well is allowed to be placed.

Recently, a novel distributed quasi-Newton (DQN) derivative-free optimization (DFO) method was developed for generic reservoir-performance optimization problems, including well-location optimization (WLO) and well-control optimization (WCO). DQN is designed to locate multiple local optima of highly nonlinear optimization problems effectively. However, its performance has been neither validated by realistic applications nor compared with other DFO methods. Field-testing results reinforce the auspicious computational attributes of DQN.

Background

An optimization problem is posed as the minimization or maximization of an objective function by modifying the control variables (x) within a search domain. The objective function is a highly nonlinear function of x and may have multiple local optima.

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