A structured approach to optimizing offshore oil and gas production with uncertain models

Optimizing offshore production of oil and gas has received comparatively little attention despite the large scale of revenues involved. The complexity of multiphase flow means that any model for use in production optimization must be fitted to production data for accuracy, but the low information content of production data means that the uncertainty in the fitted parameters of any such model will be significant. Due to costs and risk the information content in production data cannot be increased through excitation unless the benefits are documented.A structured approach is suggested which iteratively updates setpoints while documenting the benefits of each proposed setpoint change through excitation planning and result analysis. In simulations on an analog which mimics a real-world oil field and its typical low information content data the approach is able to realize a significant portion of the available profit potential while ensuring feasibility despite large initial model uncertainty.