Well Placement, Infrastructure Design, Facility Allocation, and Production Planning in Multireservoir Oil Fields with Surface Facility Networks

Managing oil fields with multiple reservoirs and shared surface networks optimally is a challenging practical problem. The majority of studies on optimal well placement have focused on either the interactions within the surface network facilities or the dynamic states of the subsurface environment. This work holistically integrates both surface and subsurface sections and addresses well placement, surface network design and allocation, and production/injection planning in a field with multiple irregular-shaped reservoirs. We consider the dynamic, economic, and operational interdependencies of the reservoirs, shared surface network, and common oil market through a complex, nonconvex, and deterministic mixed integer nonlinear programming model. Our approach determines the optimal number and locations of wells, design or retrofit of surface network, connections/allocations of wells with surface facilities, and optimal injection/production planning in water-drive reservoirs. We illustrate the complex interplay of well operations and throughputs using a literature example.