Model-Based Decision Analysis of Production Strategy for Heavy-Oil Field Development and Management Under Uncertainty: Waterflooding, Polymer Flooding, and Intelligent Wells

The decision-making procedure to develop and manage a production strategy is challenging because it requires a high investment and is performed under uncertainty. Heavy-oil reservoirs present low mobility and a high production of water under waterflooding. However, intelligent wells with ICVs (inflow control valves) and polymer flooding can improve the field’s performance. This work proposes a decision analysis to select the best strategy for the development of a heavy-oil field, evaluating and comparing the feasibility of waterflooding, polymers, and ICVs. We complement the nominal optimization accomplished for the base case in previous works by considering a probabilistic procedure with uncertainties, which includes the following: the generation of uncertain scenarios, the initial risk evaluation, the optimization of production strategies, a risk curve analysis, and the selection of the best strategy. A model-based reservoir simulation is used to perform the procedure, with the Expected Monetary Value (EMV) quantifying the economic returns. The case study is a sandstone heavy-oil reservoir (13° API) that represents a real Brazilian offshore field. Based on the EMV, we selected the polymer flooding strategy for this case study. However, since better water management was achieved with small differences to the polymer strategy, the option of using the ICVs in combination with polymer could be attractive depending on the various objectives of an oil field.