Introduction

The ISAPP field development optimization challenge has been developed with the goal of benchmarking field development optimization workflows and algorithms. ISAPP (Integrated Systems Approach to Petroleum Production) is a joint project of TNO, Delft University of Technology, ENI, Statoil and Petrobras.

Three different optimization optimization problems have been formulated as follows:

• Well Control Optimization – Optimize the controls of 7 water injection wells and 11 oil producers. The location of the wells are fixed for this problem and only the well controls are to be optimized.
• Well Placement Optimization – Determine an optimum field development plan optimizing one or more platform locations, well locations, well type, well trajectories, well schedules, etc. It is assumed that the wells will have fixed well controls.
• Joint Optimization - Well Control + Well Placement Optimization – Jointly optimizing for well controls and well locations. This is essentially solving the above two optimization problems simultaneously.

The optimization problems are challenging given the size of the model and the number of realizations over which the optimizations are expected to be performed. There are 50 realizations in the data set released by ISAPP. Porosity, permeability, net-to-gross and initial saturation distribution varies in each realization. Figure 1 shows the X-direction permeability for layer 6 of one of the realizations.

These optimization problems are computationally intensive because, in general, each development scenario (set of well controls/well locations/well locations + well controls) has to be evaluated over the 50 realizations of the reservoir model and the average NPV is computed as the objective function value for the development scenario. This approach ensures that the best development scenarios are robust over all realizations.

Please find more details about the problem descriptions, reservoir model, and expected deliverables at the ISAPP website.

References

– ISAPP Optimization Challenge Website.

– Reservoir model: Olympus