A Mixed Integer Linear Programming Model for Production Scheduling of Non-Pipelined Wells

Abstract

Non-pipelined wells are common in the oilfields, in which each well is assigned with a dedicated stock tank and tank-oil transportation is accomplished by tank trucks. There are potential safety hazards and high transportation cost caused by tank trucks under the current manual scheduling operation. In order to overcome this problem, an integrated production scheduling model for non-pipelined wells is proposed. The objective is to minimize the total vehicle travel time, while taking the dedicated tanks inventory limit, tank trucks inventory limit as constraints. As a result, the scheduling optimization problem is formulated as a novel mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model using discrete time representation method. Finally, a computational case originated from a real-world oilfield in China is provided to validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model.