Patent ID: 6128579
Filing Date: 2000-10-03
Classification: E21B,G05B

Abstract:
A method of producing a material balance solution for well patterns in a hydrocarbon reservoir that automatically optimizes the fluid allocation factors for each well used in determining the solution, comprising the steps of:randomly generating a first generation of allocation factor strings, each string in the generation assigning allocation factors to each of the wells in the reservoir representing the fraction of fluid injected into or produced from a well into or out of a well pattern;determining a fitness function value for each of the strings by evaluating a fitness function, wherein the fitness function comprises the sum of the differences between computed and measured field pressures for each pattern, and the sum of the differences between target allocation factors and the allocation factors specified within the string for each well;producing a succeeding generation of allocation factor strings according to a variant of a genetic algorithm;repeating the step of determining a fitness function value for each of the strings in the succeeding generation; andidentifying the string having a fitness function value meeting a specified criteria, wherein the identified string includes optimized estimates of the allocation factors for the reservoir for use in determining the material balance solution.