Patent ID: 7590516

Claim:
A method of optimizing production from an underground reservoir comprising the steps: (a) collecting at least one continuous and at least one discrete petrophysical parameter descriptive of the reservoir; (b) defining a series of production scenarios from the petrophysical parameters; (c) combining a sensitivity analysis and a risk analysis to analyze the production scenarios which includes constructing experiment designs comprising a factorial part, a central part and an axial part by taking account of the at least one continuous and the at least one discrete petrophysical parameter, forming at least one block by folding a regular fraction for the at least one continuous parameter and assigning to each block at least one modality of at least one discrete petrophysical parameter; and analyzing results by combining the sensitivity analysis and the risk analysis involving marginal models and a global model; (d) determining a selection of the production scenarios from the sensitivity and risk analysis; (e) performing flow simulations for the selection of the production scenarios; (f) determining a dynamic behavior of the underground reservoir from the flow simulations; (g) selecting a production scenario from the dynamic behavior that optimizes production; and (h) adjusting controllable discrete parameters in the underground reservoir as determined from the selected production scenarios to achieve optimized production from the reservoir.