A short‐term operational planning model for natural gas production systems

A short‐term operational planning model for natural gas production systems can help identify a consistent operational policy that satisfies contractual rules and customer specifications. Formulating and solving such a model poses challenges due to nonlinear pressure‐flowrate relations, a multicommodity network and complex production‐sharing contracts (PSC). A production allocation model is presented that can be viewed as a contractual model superimposed on an infrastructure model. The infrastructure model incorporates nonlinear pressure‐flowrate relationships for wells and pipelines, multiple qualities of gas in the trunkline network and models of facilities. The contractual model is a mathematical representation of the PSC and associated operational rules. The model features are inspired by the Sarawak Gas Production System (SGPS) in East Malaysia. A case study similar to the Sarawak Gas Production System (SGPS) is presented. The final formulation is a nonconvex mixed‐integer nonlinear program and is solved with GAMS/BARON to global optimality. A hierarchical multiobjective operational study is also presented.