Optimization of Wellhead Location Selection and Well Path Design

摘要

In the petroleum industry, reservoir operations are generally very costly and most of the oil companies are interested in workflows that help saving the budget by optimizing different steps of filed-developmental planning and decision making, including wellhead location selection and well path design. These steps, in most oil companies, are usually carried out by different departments almost separately, thus calling for further reinvestigations, modifications, and reconsiderations to reach a final optimized plan. The authors introduce a new methodology that thoroughly integrates all the possible data through an available commercial software package (Petrel) and suggests the best possible optimization of wellhead location and well path design only in one run. It is observed that having considered the integration of all types of data available for deciding the field development plan, the well optimizer module of Petrel could be applied to select more optimized wellhead locations, more accurate reservoir targets, and more reliable drilling designs based on drilling cost models, all in one run, which systematically considers all the steps of the process as a whole, giving the best integrated optimized plan.