Dennis Dria is a petroleum technology advisor for Myden Energy Consulting, PLLC. He has more than 20 years of experience with Shell, most recently working as a Staff Research Engineer in the areas of fiber-optic technology development, fiber-optic data management and integration and technology implementation for well and reservoir monitoring, and as Shell's Global Subject Matter Expert for production logging and permanent sensing. He is the author or coauthor of 22 US patents and more than 10 technical publications, and is a contributing editor to the current SPE Petroleum Engineering Handbook. A 25-year member of SPE, Dria has chaired the SPE Continuing Education Committee, served on the SPE ATCE Technical Program committee, and served as technical program member on several SPE Forums and Applied Technology Workshops, most recently as Chairman of the 2009 SPE Emerging Technology Workshop on Distributed Temperature Sensing. He currently serves on the Production Monitoring and Control subcommittee for the 2010 SPE ATCE and chairs the 2010 SPE Workshop on Distributed Fiber-Optic Sensing for Well and Reservoir Monitoring. Dria earned his BS in physics and mathematics from Ashland University, Ohio, USA, and his PhD in petroleum engineering form The University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA. 

Dennis D. Dria, Myden Energy Consulting

E&P Applications of Fiber-Optic Technologies

Fiber-optic technology, although only introduced for use in E&P well and reservoir monitoring in the last 10 years, has blossomed into a highly reliable set of tools that frequently offer monitoring capability not obtainable with traditional sensors, which are either permanently installed or run as logging tools or via other intervention methods. This presentation will provide an overview of optical sensing techniques and sensors such as distributed temperature sensing (DTS), optical pressure gauges, distributed strain measurement for integrity monitoring and distributed acoustic sensing. Along with this brief introduction to different fiber-optic measurement technology, a case will be made for the application of these in the E&P industry, and examples will be provided to demonstrate their value.