Note—A Model for Minimizing the Cost of Drilling Dual Completion Oil Wells

When developing offshore oil fields most wells are dual completions; i.e., two oil traps (targets) are produced together through a single hole. This problem is discussed and a model is developed for finding the pairing of targets in order to minimize the total drilling cost. The mathematical formulation of this problem turns out to be the well known “symmetric assignment problem” (or “matching problem”). Algorithms for the solution of these problems are discussed and computational results are presented.