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

Claim 8:
9. A method implemented by one or more processors, the method comprising:
generating 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;
obtaining one or more actions, wherein one or more of the actions are associated with each of the generated well placement sequences in the set;
iteratively providing each of the well placement sequences in the set to execute a computer-implemented simulation on each of the well placement sequences in the set using the associated one or actions to determine, for each of the well placement sequences, an initial reward distribution based upon a calculated hydrocarbon recovery for each of the well placement sequences and a cost of the calculated hydrocarbon recovery for each of the well placement sequences, wherein the cost of the calculated hydrocarbon recovery comprises a cost to drill at a particular location of the geographic region;
storing, for each of the well placement sequences in the set, the initial reward distribution in one or more databases;
iteratively selecting, by an agent and based on the initial reward distributions, a given well placement sequence in the set to perform, by a simulator, a further computer-implemented simulation with the given well placement sequence to generate a respective updated reward for the given well placement sequence, wherein the simulator and the agent comprise an agent-simulator environment that models a reinforcement learning environment;
updating, in one or more of the databases, the initial reward distribution corresponding to the given well placement sequence to obtain an updated reward distribution for the given well placement sequence;
obtaining 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;
providing, to the simulator, the action space and the provided well placement sequence, wherein the simulator is configured, to execute the computer-implemented simulation, based on the action space and the provided well placement sequence;
receiving, for each of the well placement sequences in the set, and from the configured simulator for a given time step:
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

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