Real-Time Optimal Resource Allocation and Constraint Negotiation Applied to A Subsea Oil Production Network

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of steady-state optimal resource allocation in an industrial symbiotic oil production network, or in general, a large-scale oil production system network, where different organizations share common resources. These allocation problems are typically solved in a distributed optimization framework, where the optimization problem is decomposed into smaller subproblems, a central coordinator is used to coordinate the different subproblems. However, the use of a central coordinator may introduce additional practical challenges, such as impartiality issues, or additional operating costs, which is undesirable even in the technological selection phase. To eliminate the need for a central coordinator, this paper proposes a consensus-based optimal resource allocation, where each subproblem or organization is locally optimized, and the coupling constraints are negotiated among the different organizations over a fixed communication network with limited information exchange. The proposed approach is applied to a large-scale subsea oil production system, where the different wells are operated by different organizations. The simulation results of the application show that the proposed approach can optimally allocate the shared resources.