Investigating Well Management Considering Integration of Reservoir and Production System in Life Cycle Reservoir Performance, Energy Demand, and Carbon Emission

This study aims to evaluate how well management impacts reservoir performance, energy demand, and carbon emissions considering integrated simulations in life cycle through long-term control rules and short-term optimization of reservoir with production system. The case study is a benchmark case representing a restricted offshore production platform with fluid treatment, water injection, and gas compression. The well controls are choke valves and variable gas lift injection rates. Unintegrated well management was compared in different scenarios for life cycle control rules and closed-loop cycle management using oil production optimization methods. For integrated management, results such as cumulative oil production and energy demand were similar to unintegrated (differences up to 5% and 1% respectively) for all life cycle scenarios. Considering gas processing capacity, particularly the gas rate required for gas lift, it was relevant to free up gas production capacity, increase oil recovery, and anticipate oil production, which is often simplified in non-integrated simulations. Short-term production optimization resulted in a greater oil anticipation (up to 10%), but lower recovery factor. The total carbon emission showed significant differences (up to 20%) due to the total gas compression, including gas lift. The results confirmed that assessment of gas processing capacity with integration that evolves artificial lift methods is important to forecast accurately production, energy consumption, and GHG emissions, especially in projects with restricted capacity. Implementing a more realistic oil optimization problem involving choke operating and gas injection proved to be quite complex and time-consuming in integrated simulation.