Successful Application of Honey-Bee Optimization Technique in Reservoir Engineering Assisted History Matching: Case Study

This paper provides the field application of the bee colony optimization algorithm in assisting the history match of a real reservoir simulation model. Bee colony optimization algorithm is an optimization technique inspired by the natural optimization behavior shown by honeybees during searching for food. The way that honeybees search for food sources in the vicinity of their nest inspired computer science researchers to utilize and apply same principles to create optimization models and techniques. In this work the bee colony optimization mechanism is used as the optimization algorithm in the assisted the history matching workflow applied to a reservoir simulation model of WD-X field producing since 2004. The resultant history matched model is compared with with those obtained using one the most widely applied commercial AHM software tool. The results of this work indicate that using the bee colony algorithm as the optimization technique in the assisted history matching workflow provides noticeable enhancement in terms of match quality and time required to achieve a reasonable match.