At the beginning of field development, many questions regarding the reservoir structural model still remain and it is necessary to mitigate this uncertainty and associated risk before the final field development plan proposition. Mitigation of risks and uncertainties can be done in two ways: through additional information acquisition and operational flexibility, but both have limitations. Information has value within a project up to the point where the benefits obtained do not outweigh its acquisition cost. Flexibility may not be viable due to the impossibility of practical changes in the production strategies or in the facilities when these are already in operation. The value of information (VOI) and value of flexibility (VOF) are resources capable of quantifying the relevance of information and flexibilities in reducing project risk, as demonstrated by the methodology proposed by Xavier (2004). However, this methodology considers fixed production strategies, which may significantly impact the value of information, overestimating it because it does not incorporate future flexibility. Thus, the objective of this paper is to improve this methodology through the implementation of an assisted automated process for strategy selection and optimization, incorporating operational flexibility to the project by reducing the number of dry wells and through a more accurate dimensioning of the production strategies and facilities. The methodology is applied to one simple case, where the only uncertain attribute is the structural model, aimed at the validation of the automated methodology. The results indicate that, in the initial phase of development, the more accurate design of the production strategies and facilities has a direct impact on the expected monetary value of the project, which is reflected in the VOI and in the decision analysis, increasing the accuracy and the value of these tools in projects with a high degree of associated uncertainty.
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