Speaking at the SAS Global Forum in Orlando, Florida last month, Bob Hatton and Ken Potter of SAIC showed how SAS’ operational research tools (SAS/OR) can be used to keep gas injection rates in the optimum ‘sweet spot’ between an unstable low régime and wastefully high injection rates. Field-wide gas lift optimization is a complex problem due to interactions between wells and constraints on gas use and production flow. Modern instrumented wells allow for gas lift optimization curves to be established for each well. These can be combined using numerical techniques to derive optimum injection/production rates to maximize profitability in the face of gas costs and the oil price.
SAIC used the Proc OptModel, a component of SAS/OR, to derive the solutions. The application included ‘on/off’ switches to allow for real world temporary well shut ins. The authors concluded that ‘SAS/OR optimization using Proc OptModel provides a powerful and flexible approach to solve complex optimization problems. The ability to translate objective functions into SAS Code and the efficient algorithms in Proc OptModel make the choice of SAS appropriate for both small and large problems such as the optimization of a 100 well oil field.’ Download the complete paper from www.oilit.com/links/1105_3.
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