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Abstract

Field management (FM) is the simulation workflow through which predictive scenarios are carried out to assist in field development plans, surface facility design/de-bottlenecking, uncertainty/sensitivity analysis and instantaneous/lifetime revenue optimization from a hydrocarbon field. This involves, among others, the usage of reservoir simulators, surface-network simulators, process-modeling simulators, and economics packages.   

We present a comprehensive, portable, flexible, and extensible FM framework completely decoupled from surface and subsurface simulators. The framework has a clearly defined interface for simulators and external FM algorithms. Any black-box simulator or algorithm may become a part of the system by simply adhering to the FM interface, which is discussed in this paper.

The FM framework capabilities are demonstrated on several examples involving diversified production strategies and multiple surface/subsurface simulators. One real field case that requires advance/complicated development logic is also presented.

Introduction

FM is the simulation workflow through which predictive scenarios are carried out to assist in field development plans, surface facility design/de-bottlenecking, uncertainty/sensitivity analysis and instantaneous/lifetime revenue optimization from a hydrocarbon field.

Traditionally, the FM functionality has been distributed among the reservoir simulator(s), the network simulator(s), and the “controller” that couples reservoir simulators to surface facility network simulators.¹ The reservoir simulator provides embedded management tools for its subordinate wells. In the case of multiple reservoirs and surface facility networks the controller manages the boundary-conditions exchange needed to couple different models and potentially tops-up with some global management tools that account for the coupling of the different models. The different models involved in the coupled scheme might have substantially different FM capabilities and approaches. Potential overlap and conflict might arise between the local single reservoir management tools and the global FM tools.

As a consequence of the relative isolation of the different simulators, the resulting FM plans/scenarios are generally suboptimal and tightly integrated to the specific simulators used in the workflow.²

Furthermore, since the FM functionality is basically independent of the simulators’ brand, the details of the physics being modeled, and the mathematical approaches utilized in these simulators, the usage of independent and unified FM framework provides a new horizon of powerful tools enabling the emerging smart field workflows.

This paper presents a comprehensive set of tools, algorithms and frameworks (referred to with FM or FM framework in the following parts of the paper), enabling the management functionality required by most conventional fields.

Extensibility and flexibility of FM also allows workflows and logic that are difficult/impossible to implement within the prescribed set of functionality traditionally provided in reservoir/FM tools. This paper presents an innovative approach for extensibility and flexibility providing many previously unavailable possibilities for advanced FM users.

The paper is presented in the following sequence:

• the big picture depicting the FM framework and its different building-blocks
• details of the FM framework building-blocks:
  • flow-entities and flow-entity lists
  • expressions
  • actions
  • instructions
  • balancing
  • strategies
  • procedures
  • fluid system
• FM adaptors to reservoir simulators and surface-network simulators enabling the abstraction of the implementation details and a plug-and-play architecture
• multiple reservoir simulations and surface-network models coupling
• customized FM enabling extensibility of functionality beyond that supplied by the FM framework
• interactive FM
• examples.