The complete paper holds that traditional facilities-planning methodologies, heavily based on design-basis documents and biased toward the most-conservative conditions, fail to recognize the entirety of operational conditions throughout the oilfield life cycle, leading to significant residual risk and the wastage of resources in the operations stage. An integrated stochastic approach is proposed, accounting for both subsurface and surface uncertainties and their interrelations throughout field life.
Introduction
The authors discuss an unbiased, data-driven stochastic work flow addressing the effect of subsurface uncertainties on surface-facilities design and operational decisions. Unlike classical design approaches, in which the most-conservative values are typically used as design input variables and assembled into design-basis documents, the stochastic work flow accounts for design-input-variable distribution and combination throughout the entire system life cycle. An example case is provided in which a flow-assurance risk is managed and chemical consumption optimized in a wet-gas field development.
Theory and Definitions
Oil and gas engineering projects are typically processes of high variety, low volume, and intermittent productivity, and with a high rate of diversification and complexity.
