Modeling Norwegian petroleum production and transportation

In the continental shelf off the coast of Norway, there are several petroleum fields containing a mixture of oil and gas. A multiperiod mixed integer programming model for investment planning for these fields has been used by The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate for more than fifteen years. In practical use, the production from each field has mostly been declared to follow profiles given by the user, but the user may also declare that the production can vary from the given profile. This paper describes the model and comments on some of the real problems the model has been used to analyze and the modeling process involved.