سینا سالاری

The preliminary estimation of the number of wells required to exploit a reservoir is one of the most important variables needed to decide on an oil field development project. Traditionally, the optimum number of development wells has been determined graphically from a plot of economic return versus well spacing .This paper derives an equation to solve this problem directly without the plot and presents an illustrative example for its application in a recent developed Iranian giant onshore oil field. The independent variables of the equation are the reserves, the production rate per well (in plateau stage of production profile), the oil price at wellhead, the total present value cost per well and the interest rate.

Optimization, Development, Genetic Algorithms, Net present value, sensitivity analysis