Title
Ensemble-based methods for well drilling sequence and time optimization under uncertainty
Author
Leeuwenburgh, O.
Chitu, A.G.
Nair, R.
Egberts, P.J.P.
Ghazaryan, L.
Feng, T.
Hustoft, L.
Publication year
2016
Abstract
One of the main activities in the (re-)development of large hydrocarbon fields is the drilling of new wells. The drilling process may involve a large number of wells and take several years to complete. Challenges include the selection of a limited set of wells from many possible well paths, and the scheduling of the drilling itself. Complications may arise from constraints imposed by platform availability and processing capacity, and from differences in the complexity of well paths that influence cost, time and risk. Several strategies are investigated to find an optimal drilling sequence in the presence of uncertainty. An ensemble-based robust optimization method is employed to maximize the expected value of an economical objective. Parameterizations of the drilling sequence in terms of both priority and time controls are considered. While these controls are continuous, the associated objective function is piece-wise constant, which poses challenges for gradient-based optimization schemes, including those based on perturbation approaches. The impact of optimizer, perturbation sampling scheme, and of control type and mapping are determined. Results show that approaches based on priority controls can deliver significant improvements of the well drilling sequence. Perturbation schemes leading to initially severe but reduced re-ordering later on are recommended. DCSE; Schlumberger; Shell
Subject
Geo
PG - Petroleum Geosciences
ELSS - Earth, Life and Social Sciences
Geological Survey Netherlands
Geosciences
2015 Energy
Hydrocarbon refining
Oil well flooding
Optimization
Ensemble-based method
Gradient-based optimization
Objective functions
Perturbation approach
Piece-wise constants
Platform availabilities
Processing capacities
Robust optimization method
Well drilling
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a69d7ebc-0802-4b89-9e4a-d3dabfa2d654
TNO identifier
574302
Publisher
European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers, EAGE
ISBN
9462821933
Source
15th European Conference on the Mathematics of Oil Recovery, ECMOR 2016. 29 August 2016 through 1 September 2016, 1-13
Document type
conference paper