Patent ID: 11915181
Assignee: SCHLUMBERGER TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  E | IPC G

Claim 15:
16. A system comprising:
at least one processor; and
at least one storage device that stores instructions that, when executed, cause the at least one processor to:
receive a set of well placement sequences for placing wells in a geographical region, each well placement sequence in the set defining a sequence of multiple wells to be placed within the geographical region;
execute a computer-implemented simulation on each of the well placement sequences in the set to determine, for each of the well placement sequences, a reward based upon a calculated hydrocarbon recovery for the well placement sequence and a cost of the calculated hydrocarbon recovery, wherein the cost of the calculated hydrocarbon recovery comprises a cost to drill at a particular location of the geographic region;
iteratively select, by an agent, well placement sequences upon which to execute, by a simulator, computer-implemented simulations from among the plurality of well placement sequences to generate a respective updated reward for each of the iteratively selected well placement sequences, wherein the agent inductively selects the well placement sequences based upon the rewards determined for each of the plurality of well placement sequences, wherein the simulator and the agent comprise an agent-simulator environment that models a reinforcement learning environment;
obtain an action space corresponding to the geographical region, the action space being an n dimensional representation of the geographical region, and the action space including one or more areas of interest indicative of predicted hydrocarbon saturation, wherein n is a positive integer;
obtain a plurality of actions, wherein a given action of the actions is to be performed, at a given time step of the computer-implemented simulation, in the action space for each of the well placement sequences in the set;
configure the simulator to execute the computer-implemented simulation on each of the well placement sequences in the set based on the action space and the set of well placement sequences; and

for each of the well placement sequences in the set:
performing, by the configured simulator, each action in the action space to determine:
the reward for each of the actions, at the given time step, based upon the calculated hydrocarbon recovery for the well placement sequence, and
the cost of the calculated hydrocarbon recovery for each of the actions, at the given time step, for the well placement sequence; and

generating, based on the reward and the cost for each of the actions, a reward distribution.