Dear Authors,

I would like to thank you for the careful reflection on the comments raised by the three reviewers, all of whom concur in their recommendation for publishing of the manuscript, subject to revision in response to their concerns. I have read through the responses you have provided to their comments, and believe that the changes you propose to the comments address most concerns raised. What I would like to now ask you is to incorporate the changes as you have suggested into a revised manuscript. I will then take the manuscript back to at least one of the reviewers to seek their confirmation of the concerns having been addressed,

regards,

Dear Authors, I have very carefully read the reports of the two reviewers who kindly accepted to review the revised manuscript. As you see in their reports, both reviewers have raised significant concerns with the revised manuscript. They concur that the response to the original reviews has not always clarified where this was deemed necessary, but rather in some cases has clarified what may well be some signifciant flaws in the interpretation and conclusions drawn.

I have proceeded to also carefully read the revised manuscript, and agree with the reviewers that there are issues in the experimental set-up. I also agree with the reviewers that the conclusions on the coordination between upstream and downstream reservoirs simply through showing that the generic reservoir rule without coordination fails to capture the observed operations may be not be fully substantiated.

Based largely on the combined recommendation of the reviewers, I propose that you carefully reflect on the critique of the reviewers, both on this second revision as well as on the orignal submission. This may require to some extent a redesign of the paper. Although the paper is very well written and presented, as did the reviewers I also struggled with the importance given in the paper to the application of the method of Morris, whilst the purported contribution (as the title also suggests) is on the coordinated operations between reservoirs. Perhaps this can be divided across two contributions. Even the abstract eludes to these being two separate parts of the manuscript, showing that you yourself seem to have struggled with the coherence of the paper.

Following this reflection, the manuscript may well need to be re-drafted. It should then be re-submitted for further review.

Regards,

Dear Authors,
First I would like to thank you for the elaborate and precise response you have provided in this second major revision of the manuscript. I also appreciate the comments made in your preliminary note, and agree fully with your remarks concerning the academic principle of critically reflecting on established methods, without the need of providing an alternate solution.

I have read the manuscript to a first level of detail, and in that first read found it to be clearer what the paper sets out to do and the two-step approach to do so. I will proceed to read the manuscript to a second level of detail (editor review). At the same time, given the extent of comments made, I will am also re-inviting one of the reviewers. I do hope they will be in a position to respond soonest,

regards,
Micha Werner
Handling editor

Dear Authors, I would thank you for your patience, as well as careful addressing the comments made by the reviewers. On the recommendation of the reviewers, I would like to recommend the paper for publication. However, some minor suggestions have been made to strengthen the link of the work presented to the large scale studies that consider reservoir operations and the challenges faced. I would think these are reasonably straightforward clarifications that contribute to underlining the novel contribution the paper makes. I am sure you will be able to provide these, following also the quite specific suggestions of the reviewer. In your response please indicate if and how these minor comments have been addressed. I will then review those, before the final recommendation for publication.

Regards and all the best wishes for 2021,

Dear Authors, I have carefully re-read the revised manuscript and think that is is now much clearer in terms of the scope of the paper and conclusions made, when compared to the first submission. I would like to again thank you for your carefull reflection on the comments of the final review(s). I agree with your reflection that the reason reservoir coordination is not been well represented in most large scale modelling efforts is outside the scope of the work presented. While I do think that the discussion is relevant, your work has indeed not explored the difference in computational efforts and would require a different experimental setup as this is not the question you sought to address. I do think that the discussion is relevant, but also that the discussion that accompanies the paper itself addresses this sufficiently without the need to further amend the paper. I would therefore like to now go forward with publication of the paper.