Smart Digital Solution for Field Development Planning Optimization

To meet the world's energy demands specifically with “easy oil” reservoirs depleting, it is important to optimize production and field development planning (FDP). This will be even more pronounced in the years to come if pore space is to be used to store CO2 or hydrogen in large-scale decarbonized energy solutions. Traditional modeling practices are known for high computational demand, and workflows for optimizing management strategies tend to be manual due to the complexity of the models. In this project, the goal is to develop an advanced optimization procedure that will serve as a smart decision support tool, which can be used to choose the best field development plan while handling properly the technical, economic, and environmental constraints. This tool integrates automated simulation with artificial intelligence and metaheuristic algorithms in one self-adaptive optimization framework and will provide possibilities to deal with complex optimization tasks in the development and management of reservoirs under uncertainty. The expected outcomes of this project are a new generation of solutions that can enhance and optimize the recovery of hydrocarbons and can also be customized to address complex optimization issues in natural energy resource development, CO2 sequestration and in other disciplines. The project will be performed in three steps: i) digital formulation of FDP tasks under complex constraints, ii) development of a smart solution for FDP optimization and iii) user-friendly tool for decision-making. The multidisciplinary aspects of the project include simulation, optimization and data science. The researcher will combine his previous research experience within these areas and develop new skills to perform the project. The host institution will provide infrastructure and supervision of different aspects of the project by integrating the researcher in a strong team in reservoir modeling and optimization that also provides collaboration with industry.