Use of genetic algorithms and neural networks to optimize well locations and reduce well requirements

摘要

A goal common to both the environmental and petroleum industries is the reduction of costs and/or enhancement of profits by the optimal placement of extraction/production and injection wells. Formal optimization techniques facilitate this goal by searching among the potentially infinite number of possible well patterns for ones that best meet engineering and economic objectives. However, if a flow and transport model or reservoir simulator is being used to evaluate the effectiveness of each network of wells, the computational resources required to apply most optimization techniques to real field problems become prohibitively expensive. This paper describes a new approach to field-scale, nonlinear optimization of well patterns that is intended to make such searches trackable on conventional computer equipment. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are trained to predict selected information that would normally be calculated by the simulator. The ANNs are then embedded in a variant of the genetic algorithm (GA), which drives the search for increasingly effective well patterns and uses the ANNs, rather than the original simulator, to evaluate the effectiveness of each pattern. Once the search is complete, the ANNs are reused in sensitivity studies to give additional information on the performance of individual or clusters of wells.