Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 73 (2010) 220–226

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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / p e t r o l

Optimal well placement using an adjoint gradient

Kai Zhang a, Gaoming Li b,⁎, Albert C. Reynolds b, Jun Yao a, Liming Zhang a
a
China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao 266555, China
b
University of Tulsa, 800 S. Tucker Dr. Tulsa, Oklahoma 74104, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the process of reservoir development, one wishes to drill wells at optimal locations so that more
Received 9 January 2009 hydrocarbons can be extracted at a lower cost. Because well locations in a reservoir simulator are commonly
Accepted 6 July 2010 treated as discrete variables (well gridblock indices), standard implementations of gradient-based
optimization are not applicable for optimal well placement, so optimization is commonly done with a
Keywords: non-gradient-based method such as the genetic algorithm. This paper presents a novel idea to convert the
Adjoint gradient
discrete optimization problem into an optimization problem with continuous variables. The idea is to
Gradient projection
Well placement
initialize the problem by putting a well in every gridblock and maximize the net present value (NPV) with
respect to the rates of the hypothesized wells. The NPV includes an additional term to account for the cost of
“drilling a well." As the cost of “drilling a well” detracts from the NPV, when NPV is maximized with respect
to the well rates, the rates of some wells will be driven to zero and hence these wells are eliminated from the
system. As the control variables (well rates) are continuous, we are able to use adjoint gradient for the
optimization process and the gradient projection method to ensure that the constraints are satisfied. For the
synthetic homogeneous and heterogeneous reservoir examples where the problem is to determine the
optimal location of water injection wells, this problem formulation yields good results after the optimization
process.
© 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction perturbation stochastic approximation-SPSA). They show that both

Well placement is an important step in oil and gas field development.
A good choice of well locations can result in a higher hydrocarbon
recovery at a given drilling cost. In most studies, well placement is
defined as a mathematical problem which maximizes either the net
present value (NPV) or the hydrocarbon recovery by adjusting the well
locations in a reservoir simulator, in which well locations are simulation
gridblock indices. Therefore, the problem of determining the optimal
well locations with a reservoir simulator is a discrete optimization
problem. For this reason, most of the research on optimal well
placement has been focusing on non-gradient-based optimization
algorithms: simulated annealing (Beckner and Song, 1995; Norrena
and Deutsch, 2002), genetic algorithm (Bittencourt and Horne, 1997;
Ozdogan and Horne, 2006; Yeten et al., 2002) and neural-networks
(Yeten et al., 2002; Centilmen et al., 1999). All the above discrete
optimization algorithms require a large number of reservoir simulation
runs due to slow convergence or the training process for the neural-
network.
Bangerth et al., (2006) compared the efficiency of a very fast
simulated annealing (VFSA) algorithm with two gradient-based
algorithms (finite difference gradient method-FDG and simultaneous
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: zhangkai@upc.edu.cn (K. Zhang), gaoming-li@utulsa.edu (G. Li).
SPSA and FDG algorithms are more efficient than the non-gradient
VFSA algorithm, but none of these algorithms can ensure an optimal
solution. The major problem of the above gradient-based algorithms
is that the step size along the search direction has to be chosen such
that each function evaluation point corresponds to the lattice points in
the simulation grid system.
A remedy to this problem is to convert the discrete optimization
problem into a continuous optimization problem so that traditional
optimization algorithms can be applied for faster convergence.
Gradient-based optimization algorithms, with the gradient of a
functional or objective function to be optimized most commonly
computed by the adjoint (optimal control) method, have been used in
both automatic history matching (Chen et al., 1974; Wu et al., 1999; Li
et al., 2003; Gao and Reynolds, 2006) and production optimization
(Brouwer and Jansen, 2004; de Montleau et al., 2006; Kraaijevanger et
al., 2007). However, to the best of our knowledge, the first papers that
use the gradient directly to solve the optimal well placement problem
are Handels et al. (2007), (Wang et al. 2007) and (Sarma and Chen
2008).
Although the method of Handels et al. (2007) and Zandvliet et al.
(2008) can be applied to the simultaneous placement of several wells,
it is explained most simply by considering the problem of determining
the optimal location of a single infill well, e.g., the location of a new
water injection well in a reservoir that already has production and
injection wells. Assume flow is only in the x–y plane so we use a 2D

0920-4105/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.petrol.2010.07.002
 K. Zhang et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 73 (2010) 220–226
simulation grid. In this case, given the current proposed (initial guess)
placement of the injection well, which is not in a gridblock adjacent to
the reservoir boundary, a “pseudo-well” produced at a small rate is
placed in each of the eight “neighboring” gridblocks. Then the
gradient of the net present value (NPV) over the reservoir life with
respect to the rate at each pseudo-well is computed. The largest value
among these eight gradient values determines the direction in which
the actual well moves to increase NPV the fastest. Specifically, the
injection well moves to the pseudo-well gridblock that has the largest
gradient value.
The work by Sarma and Chen (2008) is an extension of the method
in Handels et al. (2007) and Zandvliet et al. (2008). Sarma and Chen
(2008) distribute a specified total well rate among the actual well and
the pseudo-wells according to the position (xw, yw) of the actual well
within its gridblock. In the implementation, they used a 2D Gaussian
distribution centered at the actual well (xw, yw) for rate distribution.
The rate assigned to each well is proportional to the integral of the
Gaussian function over the area of the gridblock where the well
resides. Therefore, the actual well is always assigned with the largest
portion of the total rate and then the rate of each pseudo-well
depends on its distance to the actual well position (xw, yw). With this
approximation, the NPV or oil recovery is a continuous function of the
well location and the gradient-based algorithms can be then applied.
Wang et al. (2007) presented the underlying idea for the gradient-
based solution of the optimal well placement problem considered in
this paper. The supposition is that one wishes to add one or more
water injection wells to a 2D reservoir that contains some producing
wells. The optimization problem is initialized by putting an injection
well in every gridblock that does not have a well and constraining the
problem by specifying a maximum total injection rate that must be
allocated among the injectors remaining at each iteration of the
optimization algorithm. In the net present value, a drilling cost is
assigned for each well so the greater the number of injection wells, the
greater the drilling cost. Decreasing the number of injectors decreases
the total drilling cost which by itself results in an increase in NPV but
may also cause a decrease in NPV due to a decreased oil production. If
the rate of a hypothesized injector is reduced to zero, the well is
eliminated from the system. Initially, all injection wells inject at the
same rate which is determined by dividing the total allowable
injection rate by the number of injection wells. Then a steepest ascent
algorithm is applied to adjust rates to maximize NPV over a specified
reservoir lifetime. As the optimization proceeds, some well rates are
decreased to zero and are removed from the system. As the injection
rates have to be non-negative, it is a constrained optimization
problem. The algorithm of Wang et al. (2007) uses a restricted step
size to satisfy such constraints. It can only eliminate one injector
(drive the well injection rate to the bound of 0) at each step and hence
is very inefficient for a large scale problem. In this paper, the
constraints are ensured with a gradient projection method, which can
eliminate more than one injector at a time and hence make the
algorithm practical. Unlike the results in Wang et al. (2007), this paper
shows that it is possible to have more than one injector left at the end
of the optimization process. More generally, the number of injection
wells to be drilled is not specified a priori, but is determined by the
algorithm. In addition to its computational efficiency, this is another
distinct advantage our procedure has over the other references cited
above.
2. Well placement problem formulation
Given a reservoir with existing production and possibly water
injection wells, the problem of determining the optimal location
of new water injection wells subject to a fixed total injection rate
(qt STB/D) is formulated as an optimization problem, which
maximizes the net present value (NPV) over a specified reservoir
production lifetime.
221
The NPV functional including the drilling costs for each new well is
defined as
"N !# " ! #
Nt prod
ro qko;j −rw qkw; j k
Ninj
qkinj;i
Jðqinj Þ = ∑ ∑ Δt − ∑ Cinj ; ð1Þ
= 365 qkinj;i + β
k
k=1 j=1 ð1 + bÞt i=1
where Nt is the number of reservoir simulation timesteps, Nprod is the
total number of production wells, Ninj is the total number of water
injection wells specified initially, ro in $/STB is the oil revenue per unit
volume, rw in $/STB is the water disposal cost per unit volume, qko, j and
k
qw, j, respectively, represent the average oil and water rates of the jth
producer over the kth simulation timestep, Δtk represents the size of
the kth timestep in days, tk represents the total simulation time in
days at the end of the kth timestep, β is an adjustment parameter, Cinj
is the cost of drilling an injection well and b is the annual discount
rate. In Eq. (1), qinj, i is the injection rate of the ith injection well, which
is fixed over the total simulation time, whereas qinj denotes the
column vector which has qinj, i as its ith component. Note that because
the total water injection rate qt is fixed, there is no need to include a
term in the NPV functional for the cost of water injection. The optimal
well placement problem is mathematically stated as maximizing the
functional J defined in Eq. (1) subject to the constraint,
Ninj
∑ qinj;i = qt ð2Þ
i=1
where the total water injection rate, qt, is specified.
As stated in the introduction, the optimization problem is
initialized by putting a water injection well in every gridblock that
does not have a well. Note that the first sum on the right side of Eq. (1)
represents the traditional term for NPV and the second sum
represents the total cost of all injection wells drilled. Also note that
each individual term in the second sum on the right side of Eq. (1) is a
differentiable function of qinj, i which decays to zero as qinj, i → 0 as long
as β ≠ 0. Thus, J can be maximized using a gradient-based algorithm.
When applying a gradient-based algorithm to maximize J, some of the
well injection rates go to zero, effectively eliminating the associated
terms from the sum that represents the cost of drilling the injection
wells in Eq. (1). At early iterations, one expects that the sum
representing drilling costs will dominate so that most of the increase
in NPV will be due to eliminating wells (setting injection rates to
zero). However, at later iterations where only a few injection wells are
left, the first term may dominate and if this is the case, it may be
possible to increase NPV by redistributing the total water injection
rate among injection wells. Because the total rate of water injection is
fixed, there must be at least one injection well left at the end of the
iteration. The number of remaining injectors at the end of the
optimization process depends on the balance between the first and
second terms in the NPV of Eq. (1). As the cost of drilling a well
increases, the number of remaining injectors will decrease as the
second term in Eq. (1) reduces the NPV value.
3. Adjoint gradient
For the well placement problem, one wishes to maximize the NPV,
J (Eq. (1)) by adjusting the control vector qinj subject to the constraints
in Eq. (2). The calculation of the gradient is most efficiently done using
the adjoint method. Details on the calculation of the gradient of NPV
with respect to well controls using adjoint gradient can be found in
Brouwer and Jansen (2004) and Sarma et al. (2005) and thus are only
summarized here.
The simulator equations can be written as,
Fðx; qinj Þ = 0; ð3Þ
222 K. Zhang et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 73 (2010) 220–226

where x represents the vector of primary variables in the reservoir matrix of dimension M × Ninj and b = [b1, b2, ⋯, bM]T is an M-dimen-
simulator. Eq. (3) represents the discrete set of equations in the sional column vector. To maximize the NPV, J(qinj), we need to find an
reservoir simulator. uphill search direction dℓ at the ℓth iteration, i.e. we require that
To calculate the gradient of NPV, we define β using the Lagrangian
ℓ T ℓ
formulation as ðg Þ d N 0; ð14Þ
T
β = J½x; qinj  + λF Fðx; qinj Þ; ð4Þ where gℓ is the gradient of J(qinj) with respect to the vector of controls
qinj, i.e.,
where λF is the adjoint vector for the flow equations. " #T
The total differential of β can be written as, ℓ ∂J ∂J ∂J ∂J ∂J
g = ; …; ; ; ; …; ; ð15Þ
∂qinj;1 ∂qinj;k−1 ∂qinj;k ∂qinj;k + 1 ∂qinj;Ninj
∂J ∂J T ∂F T ∂F qℓ
inj
dβ = dx + dq + λF dx + λF dq : ð5Þ
∂x ∂qinj inj ∂x ∂qinj inj
which is obtained through the adjoint formulation. The controls are
Eq. (5) can be rearranged as, updated as follows,

  ! ℓ+1 ℓ ℓ ℓ
∂J T ∂F ∂J T ∂F qinj = qinj + α d : ð16Þ
dβ = + λF dx + + λF dqinj : ð6Þ
∂x ∂x ∂qinj ∂qinj
Another requirement on the search direction dℓ is that any point
The gradient of β with respect to qinj can be calculated as along this direction satisfies the linear constraints of Eq. (13).
Assuming the linear constraints of Eq. (13) are satisfied at the ℓth
T ∂J T ∂F iteration, i.e.,
ð∇qinj βÞ = + λF ; ð7Þ
∂qinj ∂qinj
ℓ
Aqinj = b; ð17Þ
or,
!T !T we require that qℓ+1
inj also satisfies the linear constraints so that
∂J ∂F
∇qinj β = + λF ; ð8Þ ℓ+1 ℓ ℓ ℓ
∂qinj ∂qinj Aqinj = Aqinj + α Ad = b: ð18Þ

provided that λF satisfies the adjoint system of equations given by Comparing Eqs. (17) and (18), it follows that the linear constraints
can only be satisfied by requiring
∂J T ∂F
+ λF = 0: ð9Þ
∂x ∂x ℓ
Ad = 0: ð19Þ

The system of equations in Eq. (9) is solved for λF. Once λF is

A search direction that satisfies both conditions: uphill (Eq. (14))
calculated, it can be substituted into Eq. (8) to calculate the gradient of
and linear constraints (Eq. (19)) can be found through the gradient
the functional β, which represents the gradient of the functional J
projection method and is given by
(NPV) with respect to qinj.
ℓ T T −1 ℓ
d = ðI−A ðAA Þ AÞg : ð20Þ
4. Control constrained optimization algorithm

The detailed derivation of Eq. (20) is given in (Luenberger, 1984).

As the injection rates are required to be positive and the total
injection rate is constant (Eq. (2)), the injection rate for each injector
4.2. Line search and application procedure
should fall within the bound constraints,

0 ≤ qinj;i ≤ qt :
Here, a gradient projection method (Luenberger, 1984; Nocedal
and Wright, 1999) is applied to satisfy both the linear total injection
rate constraint (Eq. (2)) and the above bound constraints (Eq. (10)).
ð10Þ Two types of line search methods using the projected gradient are
tested. The first method is essentially the same as the one from Wang
et al. (2007). In this method, the gradient is projected only onto the
total injection rate linear constraint, so A = ½1; 1; :::; 1. After gradient
projection, the sum of the components of the search direction dℓ is
ℓ
equal to zero according to Eq. (19), i.e. ∑ N i = 1 di = 0. Thus, the
inj

4.1. Search direction updated injection rates (components of qℓ+1 inj ) automatically satisfy
the total injection rate constraint as long as that constraint is satisfied
The mathematical problem is to maximize the NPV, i.e. for the previous iteration (components of qℓ inj). The upper and lower
bound constraints of Eq. (10) can be satisfied by limiting the step size
max Jðqinj Þ; ð11Þ α ℓ at each iteration so that it is not larger than αmax ℓ
defined by

ℓ ℓ
subject to the following linear constraints: αmax = minðαmax;i Þ; ð21Þ
T
ai qinj = bi ; i = 1; ⋯; M; ð12Þ where

or, 8 ℓ
>
> −qinj;i
>
>
> if dℓ
i b 0;
Aqinj = b; ð13Þ < dℓi
ℓ
αmax;i = ð22Þ
>
>
where M is the number of constraints including the linear total >
>
> qt −qℓ
dℓ
inj;i
: if N 0:
injection rate and the active bound constraints, A = [a1, a2, ⋯, aM]T is a dℓ
i
i
 K. Zhang et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 73 (2010) 220–226 223

ℓ
In the line search algorithm, αmax is used as the initial guess. If this
step size results in an increase in NPV, it is accepted. Otherwise, a new
trial step is obtained by cutting the step size in half until one finds a
step size which results in an increase in NPV. However, a standard
quadratic or cubic fit (Nocedal and Wright, 1999) can also be used in
line search. Unfortunately, the above procedure can only eliminate
one injector at a time, which makes the algorithm very inefficient if
the algorithm starts with an injector in each gridblock that is not
penetrated by a producing well, which is the initialization procedure
used here.
The following proposes an improved procedure, which allows the
deletion of more than one injector at an iteration. The procedure at
iteration ℓ + 1 is:
(1) Project the gradient g ℓ to the total injection rate constraint of
Eq. (2) to obtain a search direction d1, ℓ using Eq. (20). In this
step, only the total injection rate constraint (Eq. (2)) is active,
so A = [1, 1,..., 1] and b = qt in Eqs. (13) and (20). Fig. 1. NPV ($) contour map, Example 1.
(2) Find α1, ℓ that satisfies the conditions in Eqs. (21) and (22) to
ℓ+1
eliminate one injector, i.e. q1, inj = qℓ
inj + α
1, ℓ 1, ℓ
d puts one
wells) and the initial injection rate for each well of qt /165, our
component to its lower bound (zero injection rate for an
optimization algorithm converges to a solution with only a single
injector).
injector with a nonzero rate and it is at the center of the reservoir at
(3) Project the gradient g ℓ to the total rate constraint together with
gridblock (7, 7). Note that for an actual field case with a large
the active bound constraints to obtain search direction d2, ℓ
simulation grid system, the algorithm should be initialized by putting
using Eq. (20). For example, if the first injector is eliminated
a large number of wells at physically reasonable locations instead of
from step 2, b = [qt, 0]T and the matrix A becomes
putting a well in each gridblock. The algorithm proves to be
  ð23Þ insensitive to the β values, as the same results were obtained for
1 1 ⋯1
A= : β = 10 − 10, 10 and 200. Fig. 2 shows the NPV increase as a function of
1 0 ⋯0
the iteration number for the two algorithms. With the first method, it
took about 90 iterations to converge. However, the second method
(4) Find α 2, ℓ as in step 2 to eliminate another injector, i.e.
ℓ+1 ℓ 2, ℓ 2, ℓ converges in about 10 iterations with L = 20 (i.e. up to 20 injectors can
q2,
inj = q1,
inj + α d puts one component to its lower
be deleted in an iteration). Both methods eliminated 164 injectors
bound.
during iteration and increased NPV from $ − 4 × 108 to $1.3 × 108. In
(5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 to eliminate a specified number (e.g. L) of
the first line search, there are some iterations where more than one
injectors.
ℓ+1 ℓ+1 injector was deleted because of the symmetry of the problem. The
(6) Evaluate NPV ( J) at qL,inj . If J(qL,
inj ) N J(qℓ
inj), move to the next
new algorithm with the improved line search improved the
iteration ℓ + 2. If eliminating L injectors does not yield an
ℓ+1 calculation efficiency greatly.
increase in NPV, we simply trace back to a point qk, inj and k b L
to find a point at which we have an improved NPV value. In the
5.2. Example 2
examples shown below, we have tried different values for L.
ℓ+1
Note that in the process of finding the sequence qk,
inj ,k = 1, ⋯, L −1, The second example pertains to the placement of injection wells in
we do not evaluate the NPV (J) at these points as this would require a heterogeneous reservoir under 2D, two-phase (oil–water) flow. The
running the reservoir simulator. reservoir contains two producing wells at the locations shown in Fig. 3,
which also depicts the known permeability distribution. Porosity is
5. Examples constant and equal to 0.25 throughout the reservoir. Note that the
producers are in a zone of relatively high permeability. Again we
For well placement optimization, two simple synthetic reservoir
examples are considered. For both examples, the oil price is set at 80 $/
STB and water production costs at 30 $/STB. The base cost to drill an
injection well is set equal to $800,000. In the second example, we
investigate the impact of the drilling cost.

5.1. Homogeneous reservoir

The two-phase flow of oil and water in a homogeneous 2D

reservoir (13 × 13 × 1 gridblocks) with four producers at the corners is
considered. Permeability is isotropic and equal to 1000 md and
porosity is constant and equal to 0.2. Each producer operates under
bottomhole pressure control with the bottomhole pressures all fixed
equal to 2000 psi. The total injection rate is 1000 STB/D.
This problem is chosen because the solution is obvious, i.e. NPV is
optimized by using a single injection well at the center of the reservoir
as shown in the contour of the NPV in Fig. 1. The NPV contour was
generated numerically by putting one injector at each gridblock that
does not have a production well. Starting with a water injector in each
gridblock that does not contain a production well (165 injection Fig. 2. NPV versus iteration number, Example 1.
224 K. Zhang et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 73 (2010) 220–226

Fig. 3. Permeability (md) distribution, Example 2.

Fig. 5. NPV versus iteration number, Example 2.

initialize the optimization problem by putting a water injection well in

each of the 148 gridblocks that does not contain a producing well. The higher than that ($2.14 × 108) for the case with 4 injectors left
initial injection rate of each injector is set equal to qt/148 where the (L = 10). Both of these multiple-injector results give a much higher
total injection rate is 15,000 STB/D and β = 200. NPV than the highest NPV ($0.91 × 108) in the single injector well NPV
Fig. 4 shows the contour map of the NPV for the heterogeneous contour map of Fig. 4. Comparing the final oil saturation distribution
reservoir generated numerically by putting one injector at a time in from the L = 5 and L = 10 cases of Fig. 7(a) and (b), water from INJ5
each gridblock. It indicates that putting an injection well in a gridblock swept a large area in the “right edge” of the reservoir (blue region in
near the producers will result in a low NPV value (blue in color) while upper right of Fig. 7(a)), while there is an unswept region (red region
the optimal location for a single injection well can be found at the in upper right of Fig. 7(b)) when INJ5 is removed.
lower left corner, but the upper left corner and upper middle side can The number of injectors left depends on the balance between the
also be local optimal locations. drilling cost (second term in Eq. (1)) and oil production revenue and
The NPV increase versus iteration number is shown in Fig. 5 for water production cost, which is the traditional NPV term (the first
different specified values of L, L = 5, 10, 20. In the early iterations, the term in Eq. (1)). When we increased the drilling cost to a very large
NPV increases faster as the L value increases, because the NPV increase
at early iterations is mainly due to reducing the cost of injectors by
eliminating injection wells. However, they all converge to about the
same NPV value in about 60 iterations. The final well locations for
L = 5 and 20 are shown in Fig. 6(a) together with the producers. There
are 5 injectors left in both cases and the injection rate allocation is
shown in Table 1. Similar injection rates were obtained for each well
in the two cases. Fig. 6(b) shows the 4 remaining injectors when
L = 10 and the rate allocation for this case is also shown in Table 1. The
only significant difference between the L = 5 and 20 case (Fig. 6(a))
and the L = 10 case (Fig. 6(b)) is that the injector at the upper right
corner was deleted for L = 10 (Fig. 6(b)). Comparing the final well
locations with the NPV contour map of Fig. 4, which is based on a
single injection well, indicates that the remaining injectors are in
relatively high NPV locations, so the results appear reasonable. INJ1,
INJ3 and INJ4 are at optimal locations and INJ2 is at a less optimal
location. INJ5 in Fig. 6(a) is nowhere near an optimal location in the
single well NPV contour map. A close check in Fig. 5 shows that the
final NPV ($2.32 × 108) with 5 injectors left (L = 5, 20) is slightly

Fig. 6. Final injector locations, Example 2. The background plot shows the permeability
Fig. 4. NPV ($) contour map, Example 2. (md) distribution.
 K. Zhang et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 73 (2010) 220–226 225

Table 1
Injection rate (STB/D) allocation, Example 2.

INJ1 INJ2 INJ3 INJ4 INJ5

L=5 3734.3 3657.3 2484.8 2945.3 2178.3

L = 10 4140.1 3944.1 2739.7 4176.2 N/A
L = 20 3731.6 3635.5 2506.8 3038.9 2087.2

value ($3 × 108), there is only one injector left for both L = 5 (Fig. 8(a))
and L = 10 (Fig. 8(b)). For both of these L values, we ended up with a
single injector at an optimal location compared to the NPV contour
map (Fig. 4).

6. Conclusions

(1) A novel method is presented to optimize the well placement

problem using a gradient projection method, which can
efficiently handle a linear total injection rate constraint
together with bound inequality constraints.
(2) Unlike optimal well placement algorithms in the literature, the
one developed here solves the well placement problem
without knowing a priori the optimal number of injectors
and the optimization can result in multiple water injectors at
convergence.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the “China Important National Science

Technology Specific Projects” under Grant 2008ZX05024-04-004 and
2008ZX05024-04-005 and the “Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities” under Grant 09CX05007A. The support of the

Fig. 8. Final injector locations with high drilling cost, Example 2. The background plot
shows the permeability (md) distribution.

member companies of TUPREP is gratefully acknowledged. Kai Zhang

would like to express his gratitude to the China Scholarship Council
for the generous financial support of the research and to Yang Li
(China University of Petroleum) for his help in this study.

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