Online decision Support for Petroleum Production Optimization

Solution Seeker AS was founded in January 2013 as a spin-off company from NTNU and the Center for Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry. The Forny2020 project granted by The Research council shall commercialize a new and patented technology that will help the oil companies to produce more by utilizing the production system bottlenecks optimally. Practically speaking, this will be an automatic software advisor that gives the operators and production engineers advice on how to e.g. adjust well control valves, pump speed, and compressors, so that the production of oil becomes as high as possibly, without violating the handling capacity for water production, or the minimum processing pressure. The purpose is to improve and streamline the work process that lead to the production decision, so that the cost is reduced, while the production is increased. What's special with Solution Seekers technology is that this functionality is made possible without the use of advanced simulators. These simulators are usually so hard and time consuming to use and maintain that they often are stashed away. Solution Seeker leans instead on simple models that consciously are updated from the steady flow of fresh measurement data. In addition, an old trick from control theory is put to use; a very small and intended change in e.g. the wells control valves is made. The effect of this change is then measured in the pressures and rates, and the information is used to update the simple model so that it becomes valid for the current operational settings. While an optimization strategy that utilizes the advanced simulator try to find the optimal production strategy right away, and usually fails, Solution Seeker tries to find the change that put you in right direction. Which is a much easier task.