Gas Lift Optimization for Long-Term
Reservoir Simulations
Pengju Wang, SPE, and Michael Litvak, SPE, BP
Summary
Although various gas lift optimization algorithms have been pro-
posed in literature, few are suitable for long-term reservoir-
development studies, which require the gas lift optimizer to be
highly efficient, flexible, and powerful enough to handle compli-
cated fluid flows and operational constraints while having minimal
impact on simulator convergence rates. This paper investigates
methods to address these important issues.
The gas lift optimization problem considered in this paper is to
maximize daily hydrocarbon production by selecting optimally the
well-production and lift-gas rates subject to pressure and rate
constraints in nodes of the surface pipeline network (SPN) and to
the amount of lift gas available. The problem is regarded as a
well-management problem in a commercial reservoir simulator
capable of simulating multiphase compositional fluid flow in res-
ervoirs, well tubing strings, SPN systems, and separation facilities.
The problem is solved in selected iterations of a reservoir-
simulation timestep.
This paper proposed a method for the described gas lift opti-
mization problem and investigated its performance against mul-
tiple existing methods. Case studies showed that the new method
is capable of producing high-quality results while requiring less
CPU time for optimization and having a smaller impact on reser-
voir-simulator convergence.
This paper also applied the concept of multiobjective optimi-
zation to smooth rate oscillations between adjacent iterations by
sacrificing a certain amount of oil production. This method was
proved to be successful in tested cases.
Introduction
In mature-oilfield operations, hydrocarbon production is often as-
sisted by continuous lift-gas injection and constrained by the gas-
handling and/or liquid-handling capacities of surface facilities. Op-
timal allocation of production and lift gas-rates is subject to res-
ervoir deliverability and surface-facility capacities. These can have
a big impact on facility design and other capital-investment deci-
sions and should be captured in long-term reservoir studies. Com-
pared to real-time production optimization, the optimal rate allo-
cation in long-term reservoir-simulation studies poses unique
problems: the rate-allocation optimizer must be highly efficient,
and it must have a minimal impact on simulation convergence
while generating quality results.
The stated problem has been addressed in a variety of ways in
the petroleum industry. Fang and Lo (1996) proposed a linear
programming technique to allocate lift-gas rates and production
streams subject to multiple flow-rate constraints. The method was
implemented in a reservoir simulator and was demonstrated to be
efficient in several field studies. On the basis of Fang and Lo’s
work, Wang et al. (2002) developed a procedure to optimally
allocate the production rate, lift-gas rate, and well connections to
surface pipeline systems simultaneously. Their optimization step is
invoked at the Newton-iteration level of a commercial reservoir
simulator. Hepguler et al. (1997) coupled a separate commercial
SPN optimizer with a commercial reservoir simulator through an
Copyright © 2008 Society of Petroleum Engineers
This paper (SPE 90506) was accepted for presentation at the 2004 SPE Annual Technical
Conference and Exhibition, Houston, 26–29 September, and revised for publication. Origi-
nal manuscript received for review 22 March 2005. Revised manuscript received for review
12 June 2007. Paper peer approved 23 August 2007.
February 2008 SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering
iterative procedure. The surface-network optimizer uses a sequen-
tial quadratic programming (SQP) optimization algorithm and has
the ability to perform general operation and design optimizations.
Davidson and Beckner (2003) presented an integrated facility and
reservoir model in which the rate-allocation problem is solved in
the facility model with SQP methods. They also presented a de-
tailed procedure on how to handle unfeasible conditions. Kosmidis
et al. (2004) developed a mixed-integer nonlinear optimization
formulation to address gas lift optimization problems involving
flow interactions through common flowlines. The resulting model
is solved by a variation of the sequential linear-programming
(SLP) method. Ray and Sarker (2006) applied a multiobjective
evolutionary approach to gas lift optimization problems. In their
method, the multiobjective formulation eliminates the need to
solve gas lift optimization problems on a daily basis while main-
taining the quality of solutions.
The Fang and Lo (1996) method is simple and efficient. How-
ever, it ignores the pressure interactions among wells through com-
mon flowlines and may result in unrealistic results. The methods of
Hepguler et al. (1997), Davidson and Beckner (2003), and Kos-
midis et al. (2004) relied on powerful nonlinear optimization tools.
This paper bridges this gap by presenting a simple, yet robust and
efficient, rate-allocation optimization procedure. In addition, this
paper presents a methodology that uses the concept of multiobjec-
tive optimization (Miettinen 1999) to minimize the impact of lift-
gas rate oscillations on simulation convergence. This method was
proved to be successful in tested cases.
Problem Statement
The optimization problem is to maximize daily hydrocarbon pro-
duction by optimally selecting well-production and lift-gas rates
subject to the pressure and rate constraints of surface facilities.
This optimization problem is considered a well-management prob-
lem in VIP (Landmark 2003), a commercial reservoir simulator
capable of simulating multiphase compositional fluid flow in res-
ervoirs, well tubing strings, SPN systems, and separation facilities.
Wang et al. (2002) developed a procedure to integrate this opti-
mization problem into VIP. This procedure is presented below:
1. Start with pressure and fluid compositions in reservoir grid-
blocks calculated in the previous Newton iteration. Use well lift-
gas rates from the previous Newton iteration as the initial guesses.
2. Solve the SPN problem, and convert pressure constraints to
flow-rate constraints. This step was presented in detail by Litvak
and Darlow (1995).
3. Perform production- and lift-gas-rate allocation optimization
if the number of Newton iterations performed in the current
timestep is below a predetermined number.
4. Determine active constraints in wells and nodes. Linearize
multiphase-fluid-flow equations for well tubing strings and the
SPN system (numerical derivatives are used). Add these equations
to the linearized fluid-flow equations for reservoir gridblocks.
5. Solve the linearized system of equations established in Step 4.
6. Repeat Steps 1 through 5 until convergence.
7. March to the next timestep.
Wang et al. (2002) adopted the separable-programming (SP)
method of Fang and Lo (1996) to solve the rate-allocation problem
in Step 3. This method works as follows:
1. Construct a gas lift performance curve (oil-rate vs. lift-gas-
rate curve) and inflow performance curves (oil-rate vs. water-rate
curve and oil-rate vs. formation-gas-rate curve) for every well on
automatic gas lift allocation. In current implementation, a mini-
mum gas lift efficiency parameter (defined as the oil-rate increase
147
for a unit of lift-gas injection) can be specified. A gas lift perfor-
mance curve is constructed in such a way that its slope at the end
of the curve should be larger than or equal to the user-specified
minimum gas lift efficiency.
2. Approximate the gas lift and inflow performance curves with
piecewise linear curves.
3. Formulate the constrained gas lift optimization problem as a
linear-programming problem.
4. Solve the linear-programming problem, and obtain the opti-
mal lift-gas rates.
A detailed description of this method can be found in Fang and
Lo (1996) and Wang (2003).
When the Wang et al. (2002) procedure was applied to several
field case studies, two major limitations of that procedure
were exposed.
1. The SP method requires a gas lift performance curve and two
inflow performance curves for each well on gas lift optimization.
Each curve has to be established after the corresponding well is
isolated from the SPN by ignoring the backpressure imposed by
other wells. Consequently, the method may produce significantly
suboptimal solutions when the flow interactions among wells
are significant.
2. The gas lift optimization problem is solved in selected New-
ton iterations. Fluctuations of reservoir and operation conditions
can cause significant oscillations of lift-gas rate allocated in dif-
ferent iterations and may lead to convergence difficulties for a
reservoir simulation.
This paper addresses the first and second problem by present-
ing a simple, yet effective, gas lift optimization algorithm. This
paper also addresses the second problem by introducing a multi-
objective optimization formulation to minimize the lift-gas-rate
oscillations while maximizing the oil production.
Gas Lift Optimization Procedure
Overall Method. The gas lift optimization method developed in
this study takes into account flow interactions among wells
through common surface pipelines. The method works as follows:
1. Start with the existing lift-gas rates for all wells on automatic
lift-gas allocation. Solve the multiphase-flow problem in the SPN.
Build a linear-programming model (described later in the Con-
straint Handling section) to scale production and lift-gas rates to
satisfy flow-rate and/or velocity constraints. Denote the objective
function value obtained in this step as f 0.
2. Select a well on automatic lift-gas-rate allocation, Well i.
Denote its lift-gas rate at this stage as q0lg,i. Increase its lift-gas rate
by␦qlg,i. Solve the multiphase-flow problem in the SPN with the
updated lift-gas rates, and scale production and lift-gas rates to
satisfy the flow-rate constraints. The value of the objective func-
tion obtained in this step is f 1.
3. Compute the gas lift efficiency for Well i using Eq. 1:
f1 − f0
e= . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (1)
␦qlg,i
If eⱖemin, where emin is the user-specified minimum gas lift effi-
ciency coefficient, update f 0 by setting f 0⳱f 1, and go to Step 6
with the increased lift-gas rate for Well i. If 0ⱕeⱕemin, reset the
lift-gas rate of Well i to q0lg,i and go to Step 6. If e<0, reset the
lift-gas rate of Well i to q0lg,i and go to Step 4.
4. Decrease the lift-gas rate of Well i by ␦qlg,i, where ␦qlg,i>0.
Solve the multiphase-flow problem in the SPN with the updated
lift-gas rates. Optimally scale the production rates and lift gas rates
to satisfy flow-rate constraints. The value of the objective function
in this step is f 2.
5. Compute the gas lift efficiency for Well i with Eq. 2:
f2 − f0
e= . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (2)
− ␦qlg,i
If eⱖemin, update f 0 by setting f 0⳱f 2, and go to Step 6 with the
decreased lift-gas rate for Well i. Otherwise, reset the lift-gas rate
of Well i to q0lg,i.
148
6. Repeat Steps 2 through 5 for every well on automatic lift-
gas allocation.
7. Repeat Steps 2 through 6 until no lift-gas-rate change can be
made or the maximum number of iterations allowed is reached.
Constraint Handling. For a set of lift-gas rates q៝ lg, the corre-
sponding production rates (q៝ o, q៝ w, and q៝ g) may exceed the flow-rate
and/or velocity constraints, and not be feasible. The overall gas lift
optimization method used a linear-programming model developed
by Lo et al. (1995) to scale the unfeasible lift-gas and production
rates to the feasible region. This linear-programming model takes
a set of flow streams (either from production wells or from satellite
reservoirs) as the input and scales them to meet flow-rate and
velocity constraints in a way that maximizes the objective func-
tion. A flow stream is represented by the unconstrained oil, water,
formation-gas, and lift-gas rates of a well or a satellite reservoir.
For example, to maximize the total oil rate of a field subject to a
total-gas-rate constraint, the problem can be formulated as:
nw
Maximize 兺 xជ q
i=1
i o,i, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (3a)
nw
Subject to 兺 xជ 共q
i=1
i g,i + qlg,i兲 ⱕ Qg, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (3b)
0 ⱕ xជi ⱕ 1, i = 1, . . . , nw, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (3c)
where nw is the number of flow streams; xជi denotes the decision
variable for this problem; Qg is the total gas-flow-rate capacity of
the field; and qo,i, qg,i, and qlg,i are the oil, formation-gas, and
lift-gas rates for Well i, respectively. In the optimal solution, xi⳱0
indicates that Well i should be shut in; xi=1 indicates that Well i
should produce at rates qo,i, qg,i, and qlg,i; and xi ∈ (0,1) indicates
that Well i should be choked back.
In this formulation, all the flow-rate constraints of the gas lift
optimization are satisfied. The optimal objective-function value of
Eq. 3 is regarded as the objective-function value corresponding to
a set of lift-gas rates q៝ lg specified in Steps 1, 2, and/or 4 of the
overall gas lift optimization method.
Discussion. The results generated by the new gas lift optimization
procedure will be suboptimal because of the following two facts:
1. The function evaluation procedure employed in the overall
optimization algorithm uses an optimization procedure with sim-
plified assumptions. As a result, the function value obtained from
this procedure is only an approximation.
2. The new method is a local search method and may get stuck
at a local suboptimal point. In several case studies, it was demon-
strated that the new method produces quality results for long-term
reservoir-development studies.
emin is a parameter used to control how easily a lift-gas rate can
escape from its current value. If emin is large, the lift-gas rate is not
sensitive to small changes in reservoir and operation conditions.
Consequently, the result will be less near the true optimum, but
there will be a lesser simulation-convergence problem from lift-
gas-rate oscillations. Conversely, if emin is small, the allocated
lift-gas rates will be more noisy, but the solution will be closer to
the true optimum.
To facilitate later discussions, the above overall gas lift opti-
mization method will be referred to as the GLINC method.
Lift-Gas-Rate Damping
For constrained gas lift optimization problems, there may exist
cases in which multiple vastly different lift-gas distributions result
in similar total-oil-rate increases. For such cases, although moving
from the current gas lift injection scenario to another gas lift in-
jection scenario may increase the total oil production by only a
small amount, the resulting production rates for individual wells
can be significantly different, making simulation convergence dif-
ficult to achieve. When gas lift injection scenarios oscillate fre-
quently in different Newton iterations, the computational effi-
ciency of the simulation run deteriorates significantly. In the
February 2008 SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering
GLINC method, this problem can be mitigated by use of a large
value for emin. For the SP method, a different strategy was used.
This strategy is described below.
To minimize the impact of lift-gas oscillation on simulation
convergence, the gas lift optimization problem in VIP was refor-
mulated as a multiobjective optimization problem (Miettinen
1999) with two competing objectives:
1. Maximize the total-oil-production rate subject to the flow-
rate and velocity constraints. This objective can be expressed
mathematically as
nw
f1 = 兺q
i=1
o,i. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (4)
2. Minimize the absolute change of lift-gas rates between two
consecutive Newton iterations subject to the flow-rate and velocity
constraints. This objective can be expressed mathematically as
nw
f2 = 兺 |q
i=1
lg,i − qlg,i
0
| , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (5)
where q0lg,i is the lift-gas rate of Well i allocated in the previous
iteration and qlg,i is the lift-gas rate of Well i to be allocated in the
current Newton iteration.
The multiobjective optimization problem was solved by a hi-
erarchical optimization method (Azarm 2002; Wang 2003). This
method allows the decision maker to rank and optimize the objec-
tives in descending order of importance. For this particular gas lift
optimization problem, the first objective f 1 is the most important,
and the second objective f 2 is the least important. The decision
variable of the optimization problem is x៝. The flow-rate and ve-
locity constraints are
ci共x៝ 兲 ⱕ 0, i = 1, . . . , m. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (6)
The solution procedure for the multiobjective optimization prob-
lem is as follows:
1. Find the optimum point x៝1,* for the first objective, f 1, subject
to the original set of constraints:
Maximize f 1共x៝ 兲, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (7a)
Subject to ci共x៝ 兲 ⱕ 0, i = 1, . . . , m. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (7b)
As in Fang and Lo (1996) and Wang (2003), this problem can
be reformulated to and solved as a linear-programming problem.
Let f 1,*(x៝1,*) denote the optimal value of the objective function
(Eq. 7a).
2. Find the optimum point x៝2,* for the second objective function
f 2 subject to the original and an additional constraint:
Minimize f 2共x៝ 兲, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (8a)
Subject to ci共x៝ 兲 ⱕ 0, i = 1, . . . , m, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (8b)
f 1共x៝ 兲 ⱖ 共1 − ␣兲 f 1,*共x៝1,*兲, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (8c)
where ␣ ∈ [0,1] is the damping factor. If ␣ equals 0, the solution
is x៝1,*, and there is no lift-gas-rate damping. If ␣⳱1, the solution
will be the lift-gas rates of the previous Newton iteration, q0lg,i. By
adjusting the damping factor between 0 and 1, the competition
between maximizing the total oil production, f 1, and minimizing
the discrepancy of lift-gas rates between two consecutive Newton
iterations, f 2, can be balanced. With appropriate reformulations
(Bertsimas and Tsitsiklis 1997), this problem also can be solved as
a linear-programming problem.
Although two optimization problems need to be solved in the
hierarchical method, the CPU time is increased only slightly com-
pared to the original single-objective optimization problem if the
SP method is used to solve Eqs. 7 and 8. The reason is that for the
SP method, the majority of computational time is spent on con-
structing the gas lift and inflow performance curves. Once the
performance curves are established, it takes relatively little extra
time to formulate and solve these problems.
February 2008 SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering
Field Examples
The GLINC gas lift optimization method and the lift-gas damping
method were applied successfully to the full-field long-term de-
velopment studies of two North Sea oil fields. These application
examples demonstrate the advantages and shortcomings of the
developed methods.
Field Example 1. A full-field model was developed to study the
long-term development plan of a North Sea oil field. The model
contains 21 production wells, with all but one production well on
automatic lift-gas allocation. These wells are tied to a processing
center through an SPN system. The production system is organized
in such a way that the production wells are divided into two
groups. Wells within each group share at least one common flow-
line. As a consequence of the SPN, the production rates of some
wells interfere with each other through the common flowlines.
The goal of this field study is to investigate the appropriate
surface-facility capacities of the field and their impact on long-
term production profiles. Total lift-gas-injection rate, as well as
total oil-, gas-, water-, and liquid-flow-rate constraints, is specified
in the model. The optimal allocation of lift-gas rates and produc-
tion rates from this simulation is crucial to identify the optimal
facility capacities and corresponding rate profiles.
The full-field model was first run with the SP rate-allocation
method. The minimum gas lift efficiency was specified as 50
STB/Mscf. One concern with this case was whether the SP method
was suitable for this model. The SP method builds the inflow and
gas lift performance curves by isolating a well from the SPN and
assumes that the resulting performance curves represent the per-
formance of the well in the entire production system. However,
this assumption does not hold for this model because some wells
have noticeable interference through common flowlines. This is
shown in Fig. 1, where the oil rate of Well A1 from the gas lift
optimization in the first Newton iteration was far from the gas lift
performance curve built for that optimization. Although in subse-
quent Newton iterations, the post-optimization oil rate of Well A1
converged to the gas lift performance curve built for the SP gas lift
optimization in corresponding Newton iterations, the concern re-
mained over whether the lift-gas rates allocated from the SP
method are suitable for this long-term reservoir-development study.
To assess the performance of the SP method, the GLINC
method was used to allocate lift-gas and production rates for the
same production objective. In this case, emin was set to 10 STB/
Mscf at the beginning of the run. This was done to ensure that the
optimization did not get stuck at a point far from the optimal
lift-gas rates. After the first timestep, emin was set to a bigger value
of 50 STB/Mscf so that the lift-gas rates change less frequently and
the simulator runs faster. ␦qlg,i was fixed at 500 Mscf/D. The
maximum number of iterations allowed in the GLINC method was
set to 12.
Although the GLINC method handles the flow interactions
among wells explicitly, it is a heuristic search method and does not
Fig. 1—Gas lift performance curves and the allocated lift-gas
and oil rates for Well A1 at first three Newton iterations of the
first timestep. The oil rate and lift-gas rates are normalized.
149
Fig. 2—Field Example 1: normalized field cumulative oil produc-
tion allocated by the four rate-allocation methods.
guarantee local optimums. To verify the performance of the SP and
GLINC method further, two conventional optimization methods
were applied to the constrained gas lift optimization problem. The
first method is a genetic algorithm (GA) (Holland 1975). In this
method, the lift-gas rates for wells on automatic lift-gas allocation
are selected as the decision variables and encoded as a binary
string (or genes). This method encodes multiple sets of solutions
(lift-gas-rate distributions) into populations, evaluates the fitness
of each population (total oil rate for a given set of lift-gas rates
subject to flow-rate constraints), and evolves the populations
through a number of generations by means of selection, crossover,
and mutation. As in the GLINC method, the flow-rate constraints
of surface facilities are handled in the function evaluation proce-
dure using the linear-programming model (Lo et al. 1995) de-
scribed in the section on Constraint Handling. In this example, the
population size was set to 10, and each GA optimization took
20 generations.
The second method is a direct-search algorithm that tries to
maintain a regularly shaped simplex throughout the iterations. The
method used in this study was implemented by Powell (1992) and
is referred to in this paper as the COBYLA method. As in the GA
method, the lift-gas rate for each well on automatic lift-gas allo-
cation is selected as the decision variable, and the flow-rate con-
straints of surface facilities are handled in the function evaluation
procedure using the linear-programming model (Lo et al. 1995).
Results from the four different rate-allocation methods are
shown in Figs. 2 through 6. Although the field cumulative oil
productions from the four optimization methods are close (Fig. 2),
the daily field lift-gas-injection volumes from the four methods are
significantly different (Fig. 3). The SP and GLINC methods allo-
cated significantly less lift gas than the GA and COBYLA methods
Fig. 4—Field Example 1: normalized lift gas rate for Well A2
allocated by the four rate-allocation methods.
150
Fig. 3—Field Example 1: normalized field daily lift-gas rates
allocated by the four rate-allocation methods.
because the SP and GLINC methods have parameters to control
the balance between injection costs and oil-rate increases, while
the current implementations of the GA method and COBYLA
method do not have this functionality. Figs. 4, 5, and 6 compare
the lift-gas rate, oil rate, and gas/oil ratio (GOR) allocated by the
four optimization methods for Well A2, respectively. The lift-gas
rates allocated by the four methods follow roughly the same trend.
Although the absolute lift-gas-rate differences between the four
methods are significant, oil rates and GORs are similar. For a gas
lifted well, gas lift efficiency decreases to a small value as the
lift-gas rate increases beyond a certain value. In actual field op-
erations, the wells will be operated with lift-gas rates similar to
those obtained from the GLINC method, which are considered to
be optimal in this study.
Efficiencies of the four optimization methods are compared in
Table 1. For all runs, gas lift optimizations were invoked only in
the first three Newton iterations of a timestep. Because the SP and
GLINC methods usually require much less CPU time for a single
instance of gas lift optimization than is required by the GA and
COBYLA methods, the timestep controls of the four runs were
handled differently to optimize the total CPU time required for
individual runs. The runs with the SP and GLINC methods had a
maximum timestep size of 6 days, while the runs with the GA and
COBYLA methods had a maximum timestep size of 10 days,
resulting in a lower total number of timesteps and, thus, a lower
number of gas lift optimization calls than the same runs with a
maximum timestep of 6 days would have had. Under these set-
tings, Table 1 shows that runs with the SP and GLINC methods
required significantly less CPU time on both well management and
overall simulation than the runs with the GA and COBYLA meth-
ods required.
Fig. 5—Field Example 1: normalized oil rate for Well A2 allo-
cated by the four rate-allocation methods.
February 2008 SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering
Fig. 6—Field Example 1: normalized GOR for Well A2 allocated
by the four rate-allocation methods.
In summary, both the SP and GLINC methods produced rea-
sonable results and were much more efficient than the GA and
COBYLA methods.
Field Example 2. In this example, automatic gas lift allocation
was considered for a field with 18 production wells. All of the
wells are on automatic lift-gas allocation when they are in production.
Two case studies of this model are presented here. In Case 1,
total oil-, water-, and liquid-flow-rate constraints were specified.
When the SP method without lift-gas-rate damping was used, some
wells had significant lift-gas-rate oscillations. To overcome this
problem, a second run was made using a lift-gas-rate damping
factor of 0.02. As a result, the lift-gas rate for individual wells was
greatly smoothed (Fig. 7). The field cumulative oil production has
discernable differences from that of the first run only at the very
end of the simulation (Fig. 8), demonstrating that oscillations have
little impact on overall field behavior. Table 2 shows that the CPU
time required by the second run is slightly less than the CPU time
required by the first run.
Case 2 is a variation of Case 1. The major difference is that
Case 2 contains a total gas-flow-rate constraint, as well as the total
oil-, water-, and liquid-flow-rate constraints of Case 1. Two runs
were made to demonstrate the effect of lift-gas-rate damping. The
first run had no lift-gas-rate damping, while the second run speci-
fied a lift-gas-rate damping factor of 0.02. For this case, the run
with lift-gas-rate damping consumed only 32% of the CPU time
required by the run without lift-gas-rate damping (Table 2), while
the lift rates for individual wells were smoothed to various degrees
(Fig. 9). Cumulative oil production for the field was impacted only
slightly (Fig. 10).
Fig. 7—Field Example 2, Case 1: normalized daily lift-gas rate
for Well A3 obtained from the SP method with and with-
out damping.
February 2008 SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering
In both cases, the lift-gas-rate damping method was successful
at reducing lift-gas-rate oscillations. In Case 1, the lift-gas-rate
oscillations caused only minor convergence issues for the reservoir
simulator; consequently, the damping method did not show ben-
efits in reducing the number of iterations or total CPU time (Table
2). However, in Case 2, the lift-gas-rate oscillations caused sig-
nificant convergence issues, and the damping method was able to
reduce the number of iterations and total CPU time to the same
level as those of Case 1 (Table 2).
Conclusions
1. The developed GLINC method is simple and easy to implement.
Although the method is a local search method and handles the
flow-rate constraints with approximations, it generates reason-
able results for long-term simulation studies, as verified by the
SP, GA, and COBYLA methods.
2. The SP method does not handle flow interactions through com-
mon flowlines; however, its execution in consecutive Newton
iterations can mitigate this shortcoming.
3. The GLINC and SP methods have distinctive characteristics.
The GLINC method is more rigorous in function evaluation.
However, it does not guarantee local optimums. The SP method
uses significant simplifications in its function evaluations, but it
guarantees the global optimum of the reformulated linear-
programming optimization problem. These two methods can be
used as alternative and verification methods for each other.
4. It was verified by the GA and COBYLA methods that both the
SP and GLINC methods are efficient and capable of generating
quality results for some models with flow interactions among
wells through common flowlines.
5. The new lift-gas-rate damping method can mitigate lift-gas-rate
oscillations of individual wells significantly, reducing the ex-
Fig. 8—Field Example 2, Case 1: normalized field cumulative oil
production obtained from the SP method with and with-
out damping.
151
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method
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f ⳱ objective function
Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.
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Kosmidis, V.D., Perkins, J.D., and Pistikopoulos, E.N. 2004. Optimization
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The authors would like to acknowledge Peter Clifford and Chris
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Fig. 9—Field Example 2, Case 2: normalized daily lift-gas rate Fig. 10—Field Example 2, Case 2: normalized field cumulative
for Well A4 obtained from the SP method with and with- oil production obtained from the SP method with and with-
out damping. out damping.

152 February 2008 SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering

Wang, P., Litvak, M.L., and Aziz, K. 2002. Optimization of Production duction optimization, reservoir management, and water-
From Mature Fields. 17th World Petroleum Congress, Rio de Janeiro, injection planning. He holds a BS degree in mechanical engi-
1–5 September. neering from the University of Science and Technology of
China and MS and PhD degrees in petroleum engineering
from Stanford University. Michael L. Litvak is a reservoir engi-
neering advisor with BP Exploration and Production Technol-
SI Metric Conversion Factors ogy Group in Houston, where he has worked since 1988. Pre-
bbl × 1.589 873 E–01 ⳱ m3 viously, Litvak taught courses on applied mathematics at Case
Western Reserve University and worked as a consultant at Con-
3
ft × 2.831 685 E–02 ⳱ m3 cept XX1 Consulting. He has published many SPE papers on
field-development optimization, integrated reservoir and facil-
ity simulation, and reservoir-modeling methodology. Litvak
Pengju Wang is a reservoir engineer at BP, based in Houston. holds an MS degree in petroleum engineering from Moscow
email: pengju.wang@bp.com. Wang joined BP in 2002 and Oil & Gas University (Russia) and a PhD degree in applied
has 5 years of industrial experience in reservoir simulation, pro- mathematics from the Academy of Sciences (USSR).

February 2008 SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering 153