Development Planning and Management of Petroleum Reservoirs Using Tank Models and Nonlinear Programming

This paper demonstrates the feasibility of applying generalized reduced gradient nonlinear programming methods to solve optimal control models for petroleum reservoir development planning and management. The objective of the models is to maximize present value of profits, and their decision variables are how many wells to drill in each time period, the production rates, abandonment time, and platform size. The analysis uses tank-type reservoir models to describe the reservoir dynamics, and models both a gas reservoir with water drive, and a three phase oil reservoir. Results of several case studies on each model are presented. Extensions that consider spatial variation in the reservoir and use grid reservoir models are being investigated.