Real Time production workflows introduce significant changes to the production management practices. The introduction of new technologies such as affordable satellite communication, local field area networks, global connectivity to the internet, collaborative workspace (both virtual and actual war room concepts) and data mining agents have all contributed a number of enhancements in the production arena. Although the early gains obtained during the implementation of real time workflows can be as large as increase of 50% of production in some assets, the long term gains are typically in the order of 3 to 8 %. The paper provides a number of approaches to quantify the value of enabling traditional production processes with real time information and activities. This paper also presents some inroads and lessons learnt in terms of the deployment of a new breed of real time services offered to support daily production management activities. These Activities include: Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP) monitoring and surveillance, real time productivity monitoring based on interpretation of downhole sensors and multiphase flowmeters. The analysis of over 600 installations worldwide provide insights of solutions and opportunities in varying environments covering a wide range of challenges such as North American cost sensitive context to Colombian security conscious field operations and harsh environment deployments. Among the main challenges of the real time infrastructure for the production world, is the infamous management of legacy systems (old and aging SCADA systems, archaic instrumentation, challenging production sharing agreement financial terms). The paper offers a number of recommendations, and establishes a methodology to the deployment of workflows power by real time information. A short discussion of the relative benefits of hosted services versus fully integrated solutions housed within the asset IT infrastructure provides key elements to operators to decide what would be the long term cost effective solution to be selected for a given asset. Introduction The need for real-time or relevant data feed to support production workflows is not new. Permanent monitoring devices have been in use in the oil field industry since the beginning of the century for surface applications (earlier in the form of pressure and temperature strip charts). The field of downhole instrumentation has been tackled in various ways since the early 60s. Engel (1963) introduced an electromechanical gauge and showed data from 1959–1961. Since the mid 70s permanent electronic gauges have been deployed in wells on dry completions, and subsea in the early 80s (Bezerra et al, 1992). The value of such measurements was well recognized at that time, and it is not surprising that they are becoming more and more popular in the upstream oil and gas arena. The recent evolution of various information technologies brings new possibilities for deploying monitoring services to facilitate production workflow. The Digital Oil Field of the Future (DOFF) study, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Inc., (CERA, 2003) identifies monitoring and control as one of five key technologies that will impact the oil and gas industry in the future. With a number of such implementations already in place, it is now possible to provide examples and recommendations for a successful realization of these technologies in the production environment. However, the full realization of the value of any real time workflows lies beyond the availability of an organized and contextualized form of the production data sets. In other words, this is not just a data management issue. Automation of data acquisition, including data validation and data preparation, are key aspects of a real-time workflow. Likewise, the systematic computation of key performance indicators and the ability to generate events based on these computations, such that alarm status of well and network performance can be updated automatically, are the gems that benefit production management.

Real Time Production is not just a buzzword today. A number of assets is experimenting implementations of real time production systems and some have made the leap of faith and rely extensively on it to optimze part of their production processes. A number of trial and errors have enabled to construct a number of rules of thumbs in the design, implementation and operation of such system. Because of the easy (or easier) case for value generation, the surveillance and optimization of artificial lift systems have been preferential targets for such implementations (in this paper we will focus on ESP operations). One of the main operational issues related to the realisation of the value expect from this type of project is to ensure that all of the required information is correct. This is not a little feat! This paper describes the challenge of the federation of the information required to perform automated surveillance of ESP in remote wells. The end-to-end delivery of reliable workflows requires the following elements:–Validated streaming real time information (pump measurements, intake and discharge pressures etc...)–Validated episodic information (well test flowrates, choke and back pressure information)–Static information (tubing size, formation parameters etc...) The reliability of a real time production workflow in an automated system requires the insurance that all of these three types of information be correct. The evaluation of the dependency of reliable information of information to the quality and reliability of the final surveillance information is demonstrated through the use of graph analysis. This methodology enables to focus the field data capture in the right areas, which are not always intuitive. Field examples from South America demonstrate the value of such real time production workflows. Case histories also demonstrate instances of raising wrong alarms and the analysis of such event confirms the theoretical sensitivity analysis. The paper concludes with a number of recommendations towards the field practices related to the real time enabling of the production operations some that can be extended to the futuristic full field automation. Introduction The need for real-time or relevant data feed to support production workflows is not new. Permanent monitoring devices have been in use in the oil field industry since the beginning of the century for surface applications (earlier in the form of pressure and temperature strip charts). The field of downhole instrumentation has been tackled in various ways since the early 60s. Engel (1963) introduced an electromechanical gauge and showed data from 1959–1961. Since the mid 70s permanent electronic gauges have been deployed in wells on dry completions, and subsea in the early 80s (Bezerra et al, 1992). The value of such measurements was well recognized at that time, and it is not surprising that they are becoming more and more popular in the upstream oil and gas arena. The recent evolution of various information technologies brings new possibilities for deploying monitoring services to facilitate production workflow. The Digital Oil Field of the Future (DOFF) study, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Inc., (CERA, 2003) identifies monitoring and control as one of five key technologies that will impact the oil and gas industry in the future. With a number of such implementations already in place, it is now possible to provide examples and recommendations for a successful realization of these technologies in the production environment.

TX 75083-3836, U.S.A., fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractReal Time Production is not just a buzzword today. A number of assets is experimenting implementations of real time production systems and some have made the leap of faith and rely extensively on it to optimze part of their production processes. A number of trial and errors have enabled to construct a number of rules of thumbs in the design, implementation and operation of such system. Because of the easy (or easier) case for value generation, the surveillance and optimization of artificial lift systems have been preferential targets for such implementations (in this paper we will focus on ESP operations).One of the main operational issues related to the realisation of the value expect from this type of project is to ensure that all of the required information is correct. This is not a little feat! This paper describes the challenge of the federation of the information required to perform automated surveillance of ESP in remote wells. The end-to-end delivery of reliable workflows requires the following elements: -Validated streaming real time information (pump measurements, intake and discharge pressures etc...) -Validated episodic information (well test flowrates, choke and back pressure information) -Static information (tubing size, formation parameters etc...)The reliability of a real time production workflow in an automated system requires the insurance that all of these three types of information be correct.The evaluation of the dependency of reliable information of information to the quality and reliability of the final surveillance information is demonstrated through the use of graph analysis. This methodology enables to focus the field data capture in the right areas, which are not always intuitive.Field examples from South America demonstrate the value of such real time production workflows. Case histories also demonstrate instances of raising wrong alarms and the analysis of such event confirms the theoretical sensitivity analysis.The paper concludes with a number of recommendations towards the field practices related to the real time enabling of the production operations some that can be extended to the futuristic full field automation.

A North Sea industry-wide initiative has set out a framework to target a 'step change' in offshore safety performance, broadly defined as a 15% year-to-year improvement. To achieve this, one major operator and alliance partners have focused on behavioral and cultural issues, underpinned by an innovative training program. This step change is being pursued in an environment of strong industry growth and high personnel mobility and turnover, adding to the challenge. Initial training goals are to: train individuals to stop any operation because of uncertainty or safety concerns; institute open, low-level incident reporting and communication; and instill personal ownership of individual and colleague safety. A number of 'tools' have been put in place to promote these behavioral changes, with supervisors trained to provide better communication and counseling on safety matters. There are four main elements to supervisor training. Safety Leadership comes first. This session is reinforced by three other courses: Risk Assessment, Auditing in Safety, and Accident/Incident Investigation. Supervisor training is conducted with a 'diagonal slice', from senior onshore to frontline rig management, with a side benefit of improved interpersonal understanding and communications. One training innovation uses actors role-playing a scene offshore subsequent to an accident. Those being trained have the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, both interpersonal and investigative, to manage the situation and discover root causes. 'Freeze the action', 'living playback' and behavioral coaching of actors allow participants a learning experience not found in the real world: 'If only I had a chance to do that again.' This paper presents a summary of the strategy, tools, obstacles and results to date.