BINARY SEARCH TREE ALGORITHM APPLIED TO CASING DESIGN OF OIL WELL BASED ON MINIMUM COST

Resumo

This work aims to present a strategy to reach a minimum cost of oil well casing design through a tube’s
selector algorithm using as support the Binary Search Tree algorithm. The oil well casing system consists of tubes
and connections available that are installed on the well phases, having functions as: to prevent rock formation
collapse, to avoid fluid contamination to the well, to block fluid migration to the rock formation, to withstand
many equipment along the well, among others. It is worth pointing out that, on petroleum industry projects, a
significant part of the costs is associated to these casing systems. Therefore, the appropriate choice becomes crucial
in order to resist the solicitations, considering minimum safety factors, without economically compromising the
oil well’s viability. In fact, different weight tubes and grades steel available allows to the designer a wide spectrum
of combinations that, if well chosen, provides to the well a higher structural lifetime and, moreover, a lower cost,
associated to its building. Thus, the selection problem consists in a discrete optimization, considering the catalog
of tubes available by one or more suppliers. To illustrate it and its usability, the algorithm is applied to a
hypothetical oil well. To check these results, it is used the linear search method on the discrete optimization
problem, that allows the resolution of these problems in an intuitive and classical way.