Patent ID: 7200540

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of generating optimized platform locations for extracting hydrocarbons from underground reservoirs, comprising: computing a maximum number of targets to be assigned for each of a user-specified number of platforms by determining the product of a user-specified number of slots and a user-specified number of targets per slot; selecting a possible set of platform locations from at least one of a number of X and Y coordinates from automatically generated target locations, a user-specified number of platform locations, or a generated grid of evenly spaced platform locations; validating the set of possible platform locations to determine that each possible platform location in the set is in a geographically valid area by comparing each possible platform location against a set of exclusionary polygons; determining a best set of platform locations from the set of possible platform locations by an iterative process which adds each of the possible platform locations to a list comprising the pre-selected number of platforms and determining if the inclusion of each one of the possible platform locations in the list causes the total set of platforms to reach more targets or the same number of targets with less total distance thereby returning locations that are most desirable; and optimizing each platform location in the best set of platform locations by an iterative process which determines whether an improvement is achieved by moving each of the platform locations within a fraction of a platform reach in eight compass directions around a current selected best platform location.