The Reservoir Simulation and Management Research Group (Unisim) of the Center for Energy and Petroleum Studies (Cepetro) at Unicamp has just renewed its agreement with Energi Simulation. It is a Canadian foundation that supports the training of researchers focused on cutting-edge research and innovations in the modeling of energy resources. With the agreement, Unisim will receive an investment of approximately R$2 million (540 thousand Canadian dollars) for a project that aims to develop models for the integrated and automated management of production systems (platforms, wells and refineries) and reservoirs.
“This is a demand from the sector, as the models currently used are good for long-term decisions, but they do not focus on what is happening in real time in the reservoirs”, says Denis José Schiozer, professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (FEM) at Unicamp and project coordinator.
According to him, this stage of the project will be fundamental to achieving the final objective of the research: a digital reservoir management system. “The idea is to have automated software that can assist technicians in decisions related to oil field management looking at the short term, but based on knowledge of the long-term impacts of decisions. To achieve this, we are integrating models, data and artificial intelligence”, details Schiozer.
The system will enhance companies' earnings according to their objectives. “Our methodologies allow this. We create mathematical models that help in decision-making in relation to the company's various objectives, whether economic, productive or environmental, such as better use of water [increasing the rate of water reuse in production] or better use of CO2 [reducing the energy costs and increasing gas reinjection rates into reservoirs], for example.”
For this purpose, Unisim has had an agreement with Energi Simulation since 2015. In the first five years of the agreement, the group received resources to develop methodologies for integrating reservoirs with production systems. In the second phase, which took place over the last three years, improvements were made to numerical models for short-term responses. The current phase of the project, formalized on August 25th, is focused on developing a decision system in stages that consider long-term impacts, but a system fast enough to allow real-time decisions.
The research is also financed by oil companies that have been supporting Unisim initiatives in the area of field management since the group's creation in 1996.
Energi Simulation partners with universities, governments and industry to support the training of world-leading students and researchers at universities in Europe, North America, South America and the Asia-Pacific region. In Brazil, there are only two current foundation agreements: with Unicamp (the partnership with Cepetro and the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering) and with the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE).
