Patent ID: 6980940

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of managing a fluid and/or gas reservoir which assimilates diverse data having different acquisition time scales and spatial scales of coverage for iteratively producing a reservoir development plan that is used for optimizing an overall performance of said reservoir, comprising the steps of: (a) generating an initial reservoir characterization, (b) from the initial reservoir characterization, generating an initial reservoir development plan, (c) when the reservoir development plan is generated, incrementally advancing and generating a capital spending program, (d) when the capital spending program is generated, monitoring a performance of the reservoir by acquiring high rate monitor data from a first set of data measurements taken in the reservoir, (e) further monitoring the performance of the reservoir by acquiring low rate monitor data from a second set of data measurements taken in the reservoir, (f) assimilating together said high rate monitor data and said low rate monitor data, (g) from said high rate monitor data and said low rate monitor data, determining when it is necessary to update said initial reservoir development plan to produce a newly updated reservoir development plan, (h) when necessary, updating the initial reservoir development plan to produce the newly updated reservoir development plan, and (i) when the newly updated reservoir development plan is produced, repeating steps (c) through (h) until it is no longer necessary to update the reservoir development plan, said reservoir being nearly depleted when the reservoir development plan is not updated during step (h).