A New Approach for Dynamic Optimization of Waterflooding Problems

Abstract

Technological advances have resulted in use of smart wells, which are typically equipped with remotely operated downhole chokes. We present an approach for controlling these chokes so that the water flooding is optimized. The optimization problem is done by maximizing either total cumulative oil production or net present value.The new methodology presented here avoids the limitations related to using optimal control as no adjoint equations are needed and the model equations are treated as a