Technical Agenda

Tuesday, 12 October

Session 1: Business Case and Challenges for Intelligent Oilfields

Session Chairs: Zara Khatib, Shell; Mohamed El-Sherbini, ADMA-OPCO

In the past decade, other industries such as space industry have various evidence of business value for their assets when using expert systems or fully automated process control systems particularly in optimising design and operation, minimising human intervention and in facilitating faster decision-making processes.

This session will build on the experience that other industry has and will highlight the challenges that the oil and gas industry has been facing to catch up. The challenges include:

• Effective real-time optimised operation across the entire value chain from exploration to production to facilities while integrating business partners, operators, service companies, logistic providers, software and technology providers and various government and non-government organisations.
• Demonstratable long-term value for oil recovery and return on investment
• Closing the gap between measuring production and production forecasting
• Risk of technology failure affecting integrity and performance of facilities
• Flexible versus fixed control strategies

Vision, strategy and business cases will be presented demonstrating one or more of the following: accelerating speed of planning and execution, reducing unit technical cost, improving security, improving reliability and availability, improving safety and minimising incident probability, improving hydrocarbon accounting accuracy compared to theoretical forecasting, maximising probability and supporting remedial actions to minimise reoccurrences of problems.

Session 2: Application of Intelligent Technologies-Lessons Learned

Session Chairs: Fajhan H. Al-Mutairi, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research; Muhammad Shafiq, Schlumberger

Well measurement and control technologies (both downhole and surface) are critical in serving the objectives of Intelligent Oilfields through optimising production, enhancing recovery and managing hydrocarbon reservoirs. The oil industry has come a long way from making periodical measurements with limited and costly intervention capabilities to continuous and real-time monitoring along with flexible and remote downhole control using various sensing and downhole flow control technologies. This session is intended to discuss current intelligent field technologies which have been applied in-field including future intelligent field technologies.

Wednesday, 13 October

Session 3: Intelligent Optimisation

Session Chairs: Tim Busing, ZADCO; Gamal H. Hassan, Baker Hughes

This session addresses opportunities for practical use of intelligent technology at several scales.  Digital technology has been applied for a number of years to acquire, transmit, and store large amounts of data. Subsequent technologies enabled optimization of  production and processes through real-time distributed control.  More recent trends involve the rapid interpretation of data for better understanding of underlying physical principles, followed by modeling of complex processes, with a goal of optimal control founded on timely data and analysis.  A highlighted topic of this session will be real-time reservoir management of sweep efficiency and ultimate recovery.

The session subtopics will include:

• Data interpretation
• Integrated field modeling
• Process and production optimization
• New horizons

Session 4: Organisational Readiness for the Intelligent Oilfield

Session Chairs: Saleh Saadah, Honeywell; Abdullah Zahrani, Saudi Aramco

Are the organisations ready for a more automated set up, leading to more and better remote operation, with more sophisticated analytical tools. Is resources training sufficient to support a faster operation transformation? Is the organisation matrix (supply chain system) up to date for smart and accurate commitments from reservoir to market? Is operation flexibility good enough for delivering on aggressive promises? Is the organisation ready to have more involvement by service companies as well as automation vendors?

All these questions are necessary to build an advanced technical infrastructure and support functions aligned together and ready for more operational complexities and an Intelligent Oil Field operation.