Luigi Saputelli's doctoral dissertation on a proposed self-learning reservoir management system recently claimed second place in the Society of Petroleum Engineers 2003 Gulf Coast Regional Paper Contest.
Many variables come into play when oil field operators try to manage an entire reservoir, which can contain hundreds of individual wells. Saputelli's unique system integrates and automates reservoir production, including real-time updates that continuously adjust for down-hole variables while satisfying economic factors and surface constraints and a constantly evolving prediction of future reservoir dynamics.
The result is a self-learning and self-adaptive machine that predicts the best operating points of a hydrocarbon-producing field.
"I am combining reservoir engineering variables to produce the optimum technical well operating point," says Saputelli, recent University of Houston graduate. "But simultaneously I am trying to satisfy surface constraints, which are usually done by a different organization in any company. And I'm also trying to satisfy economical constraints, which may be done by an entirely different organization."
Saputelli worked closely with chemical engineering professors Michael Economides and Michael Nikolaou to develop his innovative ideas and technologies.
"Other approaches did not consider the online update of the models," says Saputelli. "My modelings are based on novel techniques that have been developed here in the Department of Chemical Engineering for the petrochemical industry, where they read the information into real time and they continuously update their models. What I did is translate this knowledge for the upstream petroleum business."
Saputelli has worked in numerous projects for Petróleos de Venezuela, the Venezuelan national oil company, including integrated reservoir characterization modeling and simulation for improved oil recovery projects of mature oil fields, drilling and well planning projects, knowledge management and electronic collaboration implementation, energy management and construction, and instrumentation projects.
He has published numerous SPE articles and papers about applied technology in the oil industry, such as horizontal wells, gravity drainage in porous media, combined artificial lift, knowledge management, and natural gas forecasts.
Saputelli obtained his Ph.D. on May 9, and was recently appointed Petroleum Engineering Lecturer for the Cullen College of Engineering.