The project seeks to improve the oil recovery of existing fields in the Danish North Sea by the use of simulation-based production optimization and closed-loop reservoir management.
The PhD project is motivated by a predicted rise of over 30% in the global energy demand over the next twenty years, where oil and gas will play a significant role. While the demand for energy rises the known resources are depleted. Thus it is of great importance to increase the recovery of hydrocarbons in the existing oil and gas fields.
The objective of this PhD work is to increase the oil recovery from the Danish sector of the North Sea. New and systematic work procedures related to model and simulation-based production optimization and closed-loop reservoir management will be applied to offshore oil fields.
The procedures apply stochastic programming and optimization under uncertainty to compute optimal placement for new injection and production wells and optimal profiles of water injection rates and oil production rates and/or bottom-hole pressures. The project will report expected profit and risk associated with such investments.
The expected profit and risk as well as the operating strategy for producing an oil field will also be reported. Key performance indicators (KPIs) from the financial industry, such as Capital Value at Risk, Value at Risk, Sharpe Ratio, and worst case profits will be computed as part of the new procedure.
The simulation and optimization study will be conducted using a combination of commercial and custom software implemented in a cluster of high-performance computers. Case studies from the Danish North Sea, in particular Kraka and Halfdan, will be used to investigate the feasibility of using production optimization and closed-loop reservoir management for real oil reservoirs.
Supervisor: Associate professor John Bagterp Jørgensen, DTU Compute, jbjo@dtu.dk
Co-supervisor: Senior Researcher Hamid Nick, Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre at DTU, hamid@dtu.dk
Co-supervisor: Postdoc Andrea Capolei, DTU Compute
The project is funded by the Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre