Optimal Design Of Unconventional Oil Gathering Networks

CAFARO, DIEGO C.; BURCH, DAMIAN; FURMAN, KEVIN; MONTAGNA, AGUSTÍN F.; SHAO, YUFEN; GROSSMANN, IGNACIO E.; WU, XIAO-HUI

Washington, DC

Encuentro; INFORMS Annual Meeting 2020; 2020

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences

Oil gathering networks are used for the production of unconventional wells from which flows are routed to tank batteries, where oil, water and gas are separated before sending them off to centralized facilities. The number of batteries, their size and location, pipeline diameters and network connections must be optimally determined to comply with the well development plan, while minimizing costs. Steep productivity decline curves and changing flow compositions are major modeling challenges. We present an MINLP formulation and solution strategy that includes predicting pressure drops over the network superstructure, followed by a multiperiod MILP model to determine the optimal network design.