Determination of water and sediment content is required to measure accurately net volumes of actual oil in sales, taxation, exchanges, production allocation and custody transfer. Individual well testing is the most common practice for production allocation in gathering stations; nevertheless some operators tend to collect manual-samples to verify well production. However taking representative manual-samples under transient flow conditions represents a challenge. Therefore a technology capable of providing an accurate water measurement under such conditions is of high importance in the Oil and Gas industry. An oil operation Abu Dhabi based company selected a Near Infra Red (NIR) water cut meter for a field trial to evaluate its capabilities of measuring the full range of water cut (0-100%) under transient flow conditions. The evaluation program was conceived to compare the real-time measurement from the NIR water cut meter with concurrent manual sampling drawn for different wells. 24 hours test were run on 12 wells and a total of 48 samples were collected. Throughout the entire duration of the project, the NIR water cut meter was used along with a turbine flow meter and a Net Oil Computer (NOC). The NOC performed timed well tests integrating flow rate along with instantaneous water cut reporting, Net Oil and Net Water. The NIR water cut meter was installed in the liquid leg of a converted three-to-two phase separator operating under transient flow conditions (batch mode), as there were constant changes in flow rates and separator liquid level. It was determined that this condition made the water cut downstream of the separator unstable being a challenge to synchronize the manual samples result with the NIR water cut meter readings. Based on the success criteria, the NIR water cut meter evaluation was qualified as successful. The instrument proved to be within +/− 2% range of accuracy on water cut percentage measurement with a confidence level of 88%. And since true water production from a producing well, in many cases, cannot be determined by a single sample as wells tend to produce varying levels of water during the course of the day. The combination of NIR water cut meter with NOC proved to be a much more accurate instrumentation system for well production determination. This paper presents data obtained from multiple test stages. The well tests spanned the full range of water cut (0-100 %) on flow with transient conditions. The results showed successful water cut measurement uncertainty with dump cycle flow.

In brownfields, controlling well integrity is critical in maintaining production and ensuring safety of the personnel and infrastructures. Equally important is optimizing and allocating production in wells by closely following wellhead upstream pressures (and temperatures). In the current situation, field crews have to move from well to well. This method is time consuming, exposes personnel to driving hazards and potentially dangerous areas. In addition, human reading of manual pressure gauges can result in large discrepancy in the reported values. Together with the low frequency of manual readings, this method does not allow for pro-active well intervention and can result in higher downtime in case of well tripping. Deploying remote monitoring with classical telemetry in fields with limited telecommunication infrastructure is costly and complex. Low Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN), a public wireless network technology developed in 2009, changes the situation. It enables low power compact battery sensors with up to 10 km radio range. This performance is sufficient to connect, in one go, most onshore wells without power nor connectivity. This paper describes a pilot project to evaluate the adequacy of this technology in ADNOC Onshore fields. The objective is to assess performance of LoRaWAN deployed Sensors along four metrics: deployment time, deployment cost, Base station radio coverage and data availability. The pilot uses a plug-in ATEX- certified Wireless Pressure and Temperature (P&T) sensors developed by the vendor SRETT, commercial LoRaWAN Base stations, and proprietary software to provide remote access to the data via cloud data storage and web based application. For this pilot, four Base stations were deployed in two giant oil fields collecting data from four well heads each equipped with two sensors (P&T). This combination allowed testing wireless link quality over eight radio paths, some with terrain obstacles between Sensors and Base stations. The complete system was fully tested and validated at the shop prior to field deployment. Performances during the deployment was evaluated, and Sensor behaviors were monitored over a three-month period. In the current environment, maintaining a high HSE standard on aging infrastructure must be made at a controlled cost. LoRaWAN IoT remote monitoring technology is cost effective and efficient to deploy. Once deployed, it will enable preventative safe detection of wells with potential issues, improved accuracy and understanding of production events and lead to a reduction of potential adverse situations thanks to an optimized intervention strategy.