Reservoir Surveillance and Smart Fields

Abstract

TX 75083-3836, U.S.A., fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractOne of the chief challenges facing the EP industry is to increase the recovery of hydrocarbons from the existing asset base. With access to new resources getting more difficult and production declines facing several major mature provinces, the awareness that we need to manage our assets differently is growing. Recovery optimization is therefore a growing issue with significant future capital, technological and workforce competence development implications.

Integrated Operations: Value and Approach in the Oil Industry

“…Smart Fields aims to provide an operating field with the capabilities to optimize production in the short term and maximize lifecycle value in the long term (Udofia, 2014). Potters, 2005, adds that it targets five core processes: Operations, Production Optimization, Reservoir Surveillance, Field Development Planning and Well Execution. The first decade of Smart Fields in Shell focused on the new technologies, making business cases and implementing the technologies as widely as feasible.…”

“…Unless a value loop containing measurement, interpretation and action, is properly closed it does not generate value (Bogaert, 2004). In the same direction, Potters, 2005, states that the implications of this model are simple: individual activities do not add value unless we effectively connect and integrate them and 'close the loop'. Each activity must be supported with the right skills and workflows.…”

“…With access to new resources getting more difficult and production declines facing several major mature provinces, the awareness that is needed to manage assets differently is growing. Recovery optimization is therefore a growing issue with significant future capital, technological and workforce competence development implications (Potters, 2005). Since the turn of the millennium, most major oil companies and global operating vendor/service companies have increasingly addressed oil exploration and operation enabled by information and communication technology as their future way of doing business.…”

An implementation of a distributed artificial intelligence architecture to the integrated production management

“…Following this approach, several oil & gas production enterprises are developing technological projects related with Integrated Reservoir Management (IRM). Some of the most relevant projects are the High North Integrated Operations (POSC, 2009), developed by Statoil Ò and the Norway Scientific Research Council, the i-Field (Soma et al, 2008;Sankaran et al, 2010) the Smart Field developed by Shell Ò (Potters and Kapteijn, 2005) and the Field of the Future (Sisk et al, 2007) developed by BP Ò . These kinds of models approach the automation as a mean for the production planning and operation, and not as an end in itself.…”

Business Value from Intelligent Fields

“…Since then, more solutions both large and small have been implemented under the 'flag' of Smart Fields -retrofits in existing fields and smartness by design in new projects (ref. 1,2,3). Value is generated by closing the Value Loops, through the cycle of data acquisition, modeling, decision making and execution in the field.…”