Improving the Decision Making for Heavy Oil Field Development Projects Using the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process FAHP

The selection of the best EOR option for optimizing the recovery in a field development plan is probably one of the most difficult decisions, as many parameters and options, as well as uncertainties play a role difficult to rank and characterize. This work presents the application of a new methodology, Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP), aimed to select the best EOR option, illustrating its practical application to a heavy oil field development case. In order to rank efficiently prospects opportunities and exploitation scenarios the most common approach is the evaluation based on economical parameters. However, technical parameters like well-types options, facilities configurations, transport options, operability, and reliability, are not strictly, nor solely economical parameters, hence, not easily considered during the screening and selection phases of the FEL (Front-End-Loading) process. When the number of options and parameters becomes very large, the human judgement must be supported by some kind of logical methodology or Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) methodology. One of these methodologies is the FAHP (Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process) which is a modification of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) tested previously for the development of a heavy oil field in the pre-FEL stage aiming to improve the decision-making process, including technical elements in addition to the conventional economic parameters. The application of the FAHP technique is analyzed in this work, deriving conclusions of interest when dealing in field development decisions that require decisions from a group of experts.