If your production network is constrained (the deliverability of your wells exceeds the capacity of the infrastructure), then the wells will be curtailed according to the methodolgy of the Calculation Solver Type  that you have chosen for that project (This can be set in Project settings ).

On a month by month (or day by day when using Daily Production Forecasting option in version 2.6 onwards), the program determines which wells are best produced to maximize the hydrocarbon production through the network.

The default solver is the “Full Optimization” solver that uses a non linear optimizer to solve the entire network and all constraints as a single optimization problem to best choose which wells to produce to meet all active constraints.

Other solvers like the “Well Priority Production” solver are less complex but offfer more direct control to the user for selecting which wells to produce.

See WellSpring Optimizer and Options for more details on each solver.

It is important to note, that although in a given month WellSpring curtails the production of individual wells, a well’s productivity on a Rate versus Cumulative Production basis is maintained. This means that even with the constrained production, WellSpring will still eventually produce the well to its full reserves. This is provided that it does not hit the well's economic limit.

The example below shows a well that has been curtailed. The solid line shows the potential production, while the dashed line shows the actual production. This actual production could be different due to any of curtailment, downtime or risk.

Note: You can not specify which wells to curtail in WellSpring except through downtime (See Downtime )

See also