In the current study, the streamline simulation technique is used for definition of a new objective function to optimize the production rates during water injection process. The streamline simulation technique, in comparison with common numerical methods for simulation of multi-phase flow in porous media, is much faster with less computational memory requirement. This method represents the key parameter of “Time of Flight” which helps to consider complex heterogeneity of porous media in a more easy way. In order to optimization of oil production rates from reservoir, a function based on averaged time of flight has been introduced which minimization of this function can be used to have uniform fronts of water for flooding of oil. For this target, two optimization techniques; the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) and the Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) method are employed to optimize the objective function and their results are compared with each other. Advantages and disadvantages of these two methods are investigated and based on their advantages, a new hybrid approach is proposed which utilizes the benefits of both techniques to converge to the optimum solution. In the hybrid approach the SQP algorithm is initialized with the ABC method. In order to validate the mathematical model, a 2D homogeneous model used for optimization. Next a 2D heterogeneous model and a 3D complex reservoir model are investigated. In all the mentioned problems, it is observed that the hybrid approach, in comparision with the two other methods, can approach the optimum point with better accuracy and speed.