ABSTRACT
This chapter considers several computational techniques for solving one formulation of the well placement problem. Usually, the well placement problem is tackled through the combined efforts of many teams using conventional approaches, which include gathering seismic data, conducting real-time surveys, and performing production interpretations in order to define the sweet spots. This chapter considers one formulation of the well placement problem in heterogeneous reservoirs with constraints on interwell spacing. The performance of three different types of algorithms for optimizing the well placement problem is compared. These three techniques are: the genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, and mixed integer programming. Example case studies show that integer programming is the best approach in terms of reaching the global optimum. However, in many cases, the other approaches can often reach a close-to-optimal solution with much greater computational efficiency.
