A new mathematical model for the workover rig scheduling problem

One of the most important activities in the oil and gas industry is the intervention in wells for maintenance services, which is necessary to ensure the constant production of oil. These interventions are carried out by workover rigs. Thus, the Workover Rig Scheduling Problem (WRSP) consists of finding the best schedule to service the wells while considering the limited number of rigs with the objective of minimizing the total production loss. In this study, a 0-1 integer linear programming model capable of effi- ciently solving the WRSP with a homogeneous fleet of rigs is proposed. Computational experiments were carried out using instances based on real cases in Brazil to compare the results obtained by the proposed model with the results reported by other methods. The proposed model was capable of solving all instances considered in a reduced computational time, including the large instances for which only approximate solutions were presently known.