Patent ID: 8504341

Claim:
A method for fast updating of oil and gas field production models using a physical and proxy simulator, comprising: establishing a base model of a physical system in at least one physics-based simulator, wherein the physical system comprises at least one of a reservoir, a well, a pipeline network, and a processing system and wherein the at least one simulator simulates a flow of fluids in the at least one of the reservoir, the well, the pipeline network, and the processing system; defining boundary limits including extreme levels and an uncertainty distribution for each of a plurality of uncertain parameters of the physical system, wherein the plurality of uncertain parameters comprises: permeability by reservoir zone parameters, net-to-gross parameters, well skin parameters, fault transmissibility parameters, vertical-to-horizontal permeability ratio parameters, and wait on cement (WOC) parameters, and wherein the plurality of uncertain parameters comprises a set of design parameters; fitting data comprising a series of inputs, the inputs comprising values associated with the set of design parameters, to outputs of the at least one simulator utilizing a proxy model, wherein the proxy model is a proxy for the at least one simulator, the at least one simulator comprising at least one of the following: a reservoir simulator, a pipeline network simulator, a process simulator, and a well simulator; computing sensitivities of the set of design parameters by taking a derivative of an output of the at least one physics-based simulator with respect to each of the design parameters within the proxy model, the output being related to the flow of fluids in the reservoir and comprising at least one of the following: pressures, hydrocarbon flow rates, water flow rates and temperatures, the temperatures being based on a range of permeability values defined by a decision management application, the design parameters comprising the permeability by reservoir zone parameters, net-to-gross parameters, well skin parameters, fault transmissibility parameters, vertical-to-horizontal permeability ratio parameters, and wait on cement (WOC) parameters; eliminating, from the set of design parameters, at least one design parameter for which the computed derivative is close to a zero value; ranking the set of design parameters from the proxy model; and utilizing an optimizer with the proxy model to determine design parameter value ranges.