Summary
Surveillance in one form or another has been used in oil and gas production
almost since the industry began. The initial goal was relatively simple and
straightforward: monitoring output against production targets for individual
wells and troubleshooting those same wells when problems occurred. The actual
scope of what could be accomplished was limited by available resources and lack
of tools and technology, so only a very few high-value wells could be monitored
closely.
With modern complex oil- and gas-production operations, the goal of
surveillance has evolved from ensuring a single well's performance to managing
a producing asset against its potential--a much loftier endeavor that must
consider each of the system components, the interaction of those components,
and the impact of factors external to the system. Traditional approaches to
surveillance are no longer adequate to meet the current and continuously
emerging and increasingly complex requirements of oil and gas operations.
Modern and next-generation surveillance systems must deliver more.
More recently, in both mature fields and green fields, the industry has seen
increased implementation of more-sophisticated solutions with richer
capabilities (e.g., monitoring centers that feed data into real-time displays;
the enabling of operations staff to see the status of all key measurements; and
model-based, integrated workflows to automate and facilitate operational
excellence). The addition of advanced analytics, expert systems, and process
automation (all of which routinely leverage real-time information) has taken
surveillance from gathering production data on grease books to sophisticated
solutions that combine business or operational intelligence with automated
technical calculations. Indeed, these are the types of surveillance solutions
expected by forward thinking managers. However, despite these successes,
widespread uptake of these types of solutions is slow, as is often the case in
our industry.
This paper provides a survey of business practices proven in other complex
industries, including management by exception (MBE), business intelligence
(BI), situational awareness (SA), model-based decision support (MBDS), advanced
process control (APC), and consequential analysis (CA). With learning from use
in other industries, these business practices, enabled by state-of the art
information technology, can be combined and implemented to build
next-generation surveillance solutions that will allow oil and gas producers to
manage production assets against their potential in a safe, environmentally
responsible way and in support of corporate goals.
© 2012. Society of Petroleum Engineers
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History
- Original manuscript received:
11 May 2012
- Meeting paper published:
28 March 2012
- Revised manuscript received:
17 August 2012
- Manuscript approved:
12 September 2012
- Published online:
17 October 2012
- Version of record:
1 November 2012
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