It has been reported that the benefits of DOF can include lower operational costs, earlier and increased production, lower capital investment, and increased recovery of oil and gas. Various studies have concluded that field operator productivity can be significantly increased by as much as 200% plus, operating costs can be reduced by up to 30% and production rates expanded by 8-10%.
Innovations in various technologies are assisting in making the DOF promises and benefits a reality. Many practical examples exist of these benefits such as sensor data being delivered to skilled people who, having remotely researched the data, converted it into usable knowledge and used it via advanced visualisation technology. This assists analysts in detecting complex data patterns and avoiding potential production problems before they occur. Such cases therefore lead to improved reservoir management, production optimization and enhanced drilling operations. In turn, superior business performance is realised by increased reservoir recovery, accelerated production, lower costs and reduced risks for both the company and its employees as a result of new and improved real time and remote monitoring technology employment.
BP has fitted 48% of its wells with technology for real time monitoring and has reportedly shown that it has helped in doing things more efficiently, more effectively and at lower cost.
Shell suggests that the key to the successful use of DOF is the integration between disciplines especially between sub-surface staff and operations and integration of the IT Systems or, to put it another way, according to BP, connectivity is the grease that drives productivity.
The benefits of using Integrated Asset Models (IAM) have also been demonstrated far and wide. Petrobras, for example, in Ecuador, expects to enhance production by 20% by implementing IAM and identify which wells to work on and plan its drilling campaign. ConocoPhillips successfully used an IAM model for water alternating gas development in Alaska, where it needed to decide how much water and gas to inject in a number of wells. StatoilHydro have used an IAM model in a water alternating gas flooding scheme on its Snorre B field with improved net present value of 35%.
In the Middle East there are significant plans to employ DOF technology to assist in improving production levels universally. Here in the UAE, plans are underway to improve crude production levels from the 2009 figure of 2.8 million bpd to 3.5 million bpd. Within these targets, ADCO is set to increase its current oil production capacity of 1.4 million bpd by 22% in 2017. A major contributor to this plan is ongoing implementation of ADCO’s Automation and Smart Fields (ASF) program. The purpose of the ASF initiative is to identify and apply fit-for-purpose technologies and tools to enhance asset management and optimising the use of infrastructure, facilities and manpower resources.
Other DOF programmes are underway in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait. In Saudi Aramco, it has been reported that all their new fields are intelligent fields with the latest being Abu-Hadriyah-Fadhili-Khursaniyah (AFK) field. They have shown that significant savings can be achieved from wells equipped with remote operations, permanent downhole monitoring systems, compact multiphase flow meters and smart well completions. For example, in the Haradh Increment-III, 32 such wells are doing the work that would otherwise require 280 conventional wells.
In Oman it is expected that oil output will increase by 5.8% this year and again a significant contributor to this and future enhancements will be assisted by PDO’s DOF programme. A recent significant announcement is their Fahid Collaboration Centre (FCC) as a major centre-piece of their smart fields technology programme. The FCC, which is the region’s first integrated virtual oilfield operations facility, will seek to take full advantage of the opportunities of increasing availability of real time data to take timely decisions to optimize long and short-term field performance.
KOC are planning an exciting DOF programme and expect it to contribute significantly to its overall field development and productivity programme.
DOF activities have been described as a journey and as technology developments are improved so its journey to assist increasing challenges in E&P environments will continue. Focus on DOF R&D will include corrosion monitoring, full application of predictive analysis not only in maintenance management but in the reservoir and the expectation of nano robotic field monitoring and control.
Thus the IDOC ’10 Conference Programme will seek to explore and debate: |
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is a unique event focusing on the current and potential use of Digital Oil Field (DOF) Technology in the Middle East.
