An integrated framework for optimisation of oil field production area.

Crude oil separation processes involve many high-profile control-systems and equipment costing many millions of pounds including the maintenance of, and resources for, all facilities. Mistakes made in decision-making will have serious consequences. This makes the management of decision-making in oil production more challenging as to how the productivity as well as the profitability can be increased. This project focuses on developing an integrated framework to optimise crude oil production area which includes oil wells area such as crude oil transportation and production area (crude oil separators). Mathematical programming and simulation modelling are used to investigate these issues and examine how they could be improved. The crude oil produced from different oil-wells of different capacities in different locations is of different quality. This crude oil is collected in a place called the manifold, then distributed to different separators. This environment is represented mathematically using linear programming which will help to improve the decision-making in crude oil-well selection. The nature of an oil-production system is categorised as a continuous environment and simulation models proposed in this work represent a step forward in modelling technique, as it is rare to find such types of models in the literature. The results from the simulation experiments are documented and presented graphically. This enabled the decision-making to be more effectively carried out through analysis. In addition, a full commentary of the proposed simulation model is provided to help practitioners and users in the ways of modelling such an environment using a systematic approach with animation. An integrated, user-friendly interface is developed for variable set-ups, enabling different experiments to be carried out and factors to be explored more easily.