SPE 127915

Delivering Value by Continuous and Automated Production Monitoring and

Optimization
Jordi Vilanova, SPE, Kongsberg Intellifield and Cheo Alvarez, SPE, OVS Group

Copyright 2010, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Intelligent Energy Conference and Exhibition held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2325 March 2010.
This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been reviewed
by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its officers, or
members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to reproduce in print is
restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract
The promise of an Intelligent Energy initiative is premised both on the availability of real-time data, and on improving
real-time communications between the field and the office. However, acquiring, organizing, and making sense of realtime data for field production management poses a number of challenges for any individual surveillance engineer. For
an asset team working collaboratively, the challenge of efficient and effective data monitoring and the performance of
optimization workflows can be even more demanding. Many production workflows require an engineer to coordinate
data flows between numerous, diverse, and frequently siloed systems and applications. Studies have shown that
approximately 50-70% of an engineers time is spent finding, gathering, and managing data for use in these different
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applications . This non-productive time can be drastically reduced by defining standard production workflows, by
implementing an automated system to execute these prescribed workflows, and by ensuring that the data sources are
well defined and accessible.
A well-designed, thoughtfully implemented, and automated workflow ensures that all the relevant data is available at
the fingertips of each member of the asset team, reduces the likehood of input errors, and removes the burden of data
management from engineering personnel. These automated workflows allow knowledge workers to focus on valueadded engineering tasks. In addition, the design and implementation of automated and configurable workflows creates
a transparency and consistency in work processes that can be customized to the unique needs of each asset.
This paper presents an asset-based collaborative project that includes:

Initial needs assessment

Design of well data required for advanced surveillance
Workflow design
Implementation methodology
Value realization review

The core enabling technology that allows these automated workflows is a vendor-neutral integration platform that
dynamically links diverse data sources and software applications currently in use for production monitoring and
optimization.

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Introduction
Asset productivity and return on investment (ROI) can be improved through better production monitoring and
optimization. These tasks have taken on increased importance due to an explosion of data sources and applications,
and the maturing of oil and gas fields, along with the associated challenges of pressure depletion, water production,
and equipment failures. The typical production surveillance process consists of monitoring: oil, gas and water
production rates against time; cumulative production volumes; downhole and surface pressures; flowing and artificial
lift efficiency; and downtime events and causes. This data is then analyzed against the most recent forecasts and
decline curve analysis, followed by field adjustments to optimize reservoir recovery and production strategies.
Traditionally, many production workflows require an engineer to coordinate data flows between numerous, diverse,
and often unintegrated applications. Studies have shown that reservoir and production engineers spend an estimated
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fifty to seventy percent of their time finding, gathering, and managing the data . By introducing a level of orchestration
and automatation to the flow of data through applications, the engineer has the time to move from mere production
surveillance to enhanced monitoring and optimization. This can bring many benefits, including increased production
and reserves recovery, reduced time to identify problem wells, timely correction of allocation problems, and better
integration of surface and subsurface data and operations.
This paper discusses a Well-Reservoir Monitoring System (WRMS) project recently conducted in conjunction with the
implementation of an Integrated Collaboration Environment (ICE) on a key asset in the Middle East.
This project used a proven methodology and technology consisting of:
1. Identification and ranking of the current manual workflows, data management, and challenges and
opportunities within production surveillance;
2. Implementation of a solution (WRMS) for automating, live-linking, visualizing, trending, correlating, analyzing
intervention and well-reservoir data;
3. Effective surveillance workflow definition and solution mentoring for engineers.
For this work, we do not focus on the hardware aspects of intelligent wells or smart fields which have been addressed
by previous works. The methodology assumes that the requisite hardware and systems for real-time data acquisition
are in place; therefore, the emphasis of our design is on the proper orchestration of these systems so that the full value
of investment in smart field technology can be realized.
The Case for Engineering Workflow Automation
The standardization of engineering workflows within an asset can provide new and improved analytical capabilities that
are applicable to a wide range of tasks, including field development planning, production deferment tracking,
production optimization, and assisted model creation, among many others. Effective workflow management is
associated with multiple benefits, including knowledge retention when older employees leave the workforce,
knowledge transfer, and process automation that result in the most cost effective management of production assets.
Automation in particular is required more than ever due to the increasing complexity of operations, the management of
larger data sets for ongoing operations, and the need for more precise decision-making. The new engineering
workflows are equally well-suited to the particular challenges posed within the strategic, tactical, and operational siloes
of upstream operations (Figure 1). Furthermore, automated workflows, once proven, can then be quickly and reliably
implemented across multiple assets with similar challenges. Automation of engineering workflows can drastically
change the way we deal with engineering and operations in the upstream production arena, and will enable new
capabilities for production surveillance by providing better integration of modeling tools and analytical processes with
underlying systems for data access and acquisition.
Below, we discuss the challenges associated with real-time-optimization and surveillance processes, and present
some specific workflows we have developed to handle these processes.

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High

Low

Value Creation
Strategic

Reserves
Produced vs. Reserves
Cost per barrel
ROCE, EVA, NPV

Tactical

Operational

Potential increment
Downtime
Project KPIs

Operational efficiency
HSE
(Data collection)

Medium Term Loop

Reservoir
Characterization

Field
Development
Planning

Execution Plan
Monitoring

Long Term Loop

Years

Months

Weeks

Operations

Short Term Loop

Days

Hours

Minutes

Seconds

Cost
Low

High

Figure 1: Engineering Upstream High-Level Workflows Strategic, tactical, and operational workflows can all be automated

The Asset Oil Fields

The asset contains two of the largest and most mature fields in the region. The remaining developed reserves are
classified as NFA (No Further Action); therefore, efficient well-reservoir monitoring in combination with optimized
operation of the existing wells and facilities is key to deliver and secure this oil.
The asset unit is a complex operation, where currently two recovery mechanisms are managed in parallel: Gas Oil
Gravity Drainage (GOGD) and waterflooding. Each of these recovery mechanisms has their unique approaches in
petroleum engineering and operations management. The main issues for the asset well-reservoir performance team is
to ensure the best gas-lift optimization according to the available total gas-lift rate; check that wells are produced at
their targeted production parameters; and rapidly detect any malfunctions, such as ineffiencient injection or abnormal
unstable well performance.
The Production Monitoring & Optimzation Workflow Assessment
Production monitoring takes many forms within the oil and gas community. Much of the current portfolio of reservoir
surveillance methods includes raw SCADA data, spreadsheets, ad-hoc reports, and production economics data.
These data sources often have little filtering or summarization, require a significant amount of maintenance, are limited
to raw tabular data or x-y plots, and/or allow viewing of wells one at a time. Such limitations prevent engineers from
being able to convert data into effective action. Data analysis is also performed using a number of diverse software
programs from a variety of different small and large software vendors
The Middle East asset team reservoir or production engineers have many challenges that impact his or her ability to
effectively monitor and optimize field performance, including the following:

Increasingly a greater number of disparate systems and applications are used, including customized
spreadsheets;
Data not integrated or filtered to support decisions;
High volume of production data;
Monitoring higher number of older wells;
Lack of readily accessible current production data; and
Lack of data that can be use to predict failures and model-based surveillance-by-exception.

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These challenges limit the engineers ability to optimize field performance.

A set of workflows needs to be defined specific to each asset team. This would define the inputs and outputs, the data
sources, the data manipulation required, software applications used, and the key decisions to be supported by the
surveillance process. This definition can be best achieved through a project consisting of workflow assessment,
requirements analysis, technology selection, workflow design, and implementation steps. Figure 2 summarizes the
process steps. Below we describe our experience applying this same process to improve the monitoring and
optimization activites for the previously decribed asset, with the guidance and support of the experienced asset team,
and in combination with work processes that are carried out in the recently constructed Integrated Collaboration
Environment (ICE).
Workflow Assessment

Assessment
Phase

Problem Statement Where is the pain?

Interviews and Information Gathering What are the daily activities, time spent?
User Functional Requirements & Data Sources Identification Where is the data?
Involve key players reservoir, production engineers, IT data management, etc.

Requirement Analysis
Improvement opportunities identified for the asset and processes
Recommended workflows and monitoring templates selection
Report presented and approved

Workflow Steps

Implementation
Phase

As-is
To-be
Data sources and engineering tools

Workflow Implementation
Electronic well file , Surveillance-by-Exception process, Production charts, Event
Detection and Notification
Linked charts for drill-down analysis
Data sources and applications linkages

Training & Mentoring

User guide with screen shots
Brief training on common functions
One-on-one mentoring on workflows and templates

Figure 2: Project Outline Stages

Workflow Assessment
The needs of the engineers were assessed through a series of interviews and meetings designed to capture key
information about reservoir characteristics, production operations, workflow and performance, historical issues, data
sources, and current optimization tools being used. This process generated useful profiles of the asset, production
issues, the current monitoring and optimization environment, data management process, and existing workflows.
Reponses in the interviews were captured and synthesized into logical categories of issues and opportunities that
could be reviewed and ranked by the asset team. The functional requirements were then reviewed with the asset
team key members in face-to-face follow-up meetings.
The information obtained during the different meetings and conversations with the asset team was analyzed and
classified by the consulting team. Once key issues were identified, monitoring and optimization improvement
opportunities were selected, with the support of numerical rankings given to the opportunities to help prioritize the
implementation activities. The analysis work considered opportunities related to work processes such as: electronic
well file, daily production monitoring; monitoring of well test data versus daily allocated production; production decline

SPE 127915

analysis; equipment monitoring and failure analysis; and SCADA-provided pressure and equipment data to monitor
and troubleshoot surface pressure losses, performance, and events.
Requirements Analysis and Implementation
All members of the asset team identified the following opportunities for automating data aggregation, workflow, and
improving efficiency of their production monitoring process:

Automate the generation of electronic well file from available database with all events/actions and data
available (drilling, operations and surveillance reports).
Provide capability of Real Time Monitoring to track performance, intervention, and event detection.
Facilitate surveillance-by-exception workflows and generate performance-tracking plots using operating
envelops defined by the user.
Provide ability to Automate Visualization of plots from the field/wells and associated exception flags.
Provide the ability to integrate existing production, third-party applications, SCADA and corporate databases.
Provide standard production and well test data monitoring and trends, views, and reports.
Provide views and analysis of single and multiple well production data, well test, pattern group, and production
forecasting.

Electronic Well File

Exception Based
Surveillance

SBE Support

Web-Based Tools

Data / Report / Task

Functions

Custom Workflows

Data
Sources

Model Based Well

Test Validation

Escalation
Workflow

Production Monitor

Well Performance
Analysis

WRMS

Data
Access
Layer

Workflow
Layer

Presentation Layer

Based on these requirements and the agreement of the asset team, several worklow solutions were implemented as
the core of the Well-Reservoir Monitoring System (WRMS). The architecture of the solution implemented during the
course of the project is shown in Figure 3.

Custom GUIs

Visual Workflow

Catalogue & Meta-Data

Project DB

Data Warehouse

Strategic

Production
Forecasts

Operating
Envelope

Tactical

Exception
Flags

Aux
Database

SCADA

Operational

Figure 3: Well-Reservoir Performance Monitoring System (WRMS) Solution Architecture

The Data Sources are the foundation of the system and were housed in a number of disparate systems including
Oracle, SCADA, MS Excel, and MS Access. The initial step in this project was to prepare the Data Access Layer by
mapping to and configuring each of the requisite data sources. Once configured, these data sources are then
available to be accessed and utilized in a seamless fashion, greatly facilitating the automation of the Workflow and
Presentation Layers.

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The key enabling technology used to implement this architecture is a vendor-neutral integration platform that allows
dynamic linking between diverse data sources and most of the common production optimization and hydrocarbon
accounting packages available and in use today.
We present two examples of automated workflows implemented in this project. These include:
1. use of a model-based surveillance-by-exception workflow to produce timely, actionable data for proactive field
management; and
2. well test validation workflow to corroborate well performance and well model matching.
These workflows serve as an excellent model of how the integration and automation of data, tools, and processes can
be better achieved through well designed workflow management system.
Model-Based Well Surveillance by Exception Workflow
Rather than requiring an operator/engineer to examine each wells status every day, the concept of management by
exception is used to provide information about anomalies through alarming. This allows the user to focus on
prioritizing identified problems, rather than searching for problems that may or may not exist. Managing wells by
exception helps to keep downtime to a minimum.
The WRMS Surveillance by Exception module alerts the asset members when data values are outside of user defined
limits. The Surveillance by Exception (SBE) module surveys the data to which WRMS is connected, and compares
that data to scenario parameters that the users or team have defined. If the value of the data is outside the scenario
parameters alarms are triggered. Outputs from SBE will include email alerts, alarm reports, and charts that graphically
show how the production data compares to the scenario parameters.
The WRMS presents the data in a color coded fashion that facilitates easy scanning of a large number of wells. SBE
substantially reduces the number of times needed for someone to visit and personally inspect each well. Wells still
need to be visited, but site visit frequency can be reduced substantially, which frees asset personnel for priority
problem solving or other proactive activities.

Figure 4: WRMS Traffic Light Report with drilldown functionality

The WRMS will also generate historical and real-time production performance tracking plots using standardsformats
defined by the users (Figure 4). This workflow fully automates the process of production surveillance, and ensures

SPE 127915

that models are run using the latest data.

optimization tasks.

This allows engineers to focus on higher-level characterization and

Well Test Validation Workflow

Production tests are the usual way to characterize the production performance of the well, and to check the accuracy
of the wellbore models, which are used to simulate real-time behavior of the well or optimize the production system.
Since the optimization process is entirely dependent on the validity of the well models, it is critical that these models be
constantly validated as new data becomes available. One way to validate the models is to ensure that they reproduce
the observed behavior of periodic production tests.
rd

This is the reasoning behind the modeling workflow presented here using the WRMS and a 3 party engineering
software for well performance modeling. To validate the models, the operational conditions of the production test are
automatically fed to the well performance modeling tool. If the analysis reproduces the production test within a set
tolerance (e.g. 5%) then the model is deemed valid and no further action is necessary. In case of discrepancy between
the model output and the corresponding actual value (Figure 5) of the production well test, an alarm is triggered and
the engineer is alerted to review the well test conditions and determine if a model adjustment is called for.

Figure 5: WRMS Well Test Validation

Benefits of Continuous and Automated Production Monitoring and Optimization

This project used an integration platform to allow automation of a number of workflows focused on production
monitoring and optimization. Two examples of these workflows were shown in this paper. The initial effort to
dynamically link the diverse data sources and software applications resulted in automated workflows that are
repeatable, standardized, and that provide the engineers with more time for true engineering tasks.
The production and reservoir engineers involved in this project agreed that certain benefits are achievable through
streamlined and automated production monitoring and optimization:

Improved uptime, improved production by rapid detection of abnormal or unstable well performance
Time to identify problem wells significantly reduced, typically from monthly to daily and within the day
(intraday)
Better access to and accuracy of key production data
Ability to use existing infrastructure and licenses by integration of legacy, third-party, SCADA, and corporate
production databases

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Ability to view multiple wells for reservoir analysis

Also as a result of the project, some best practices regarding the production monitoring and optimization process were
identified by the asset and consulting team:

Increased focus on proactive monitoring and trending

Standardized production and well test data monitoring and trend views for all asset users - PEs, REs,
Geologists, asset managers, and foremen
Use of multiple well production, incremental production and production test charts for analysis
Equipment performance, injection groups pattern analysis, pressure monitoring, events superimposed on
production charts and forecasts
User guide with workflow supported by screenshots
Reusable implementation across asset teams and business units based on similar asset characteristics

Conclusions
The following conclusions are made as a result of the assessment and implementation project:
1. A new monitoring, modeling, and alarming application has been successfully implemented for a Middle East
key asset team.
2. The surveillance process, workflows, and data should be analyzed from an asset-specific point of view. At the
same time, a robust definition of standards for solution implementation will help drive consistency, acceptance,
and engineer efficiency.
3. The system (WRMS) leverages in-situ data sources and applications, complementing engineers existing
workflows, and maximizing value of existing IT infrastructure.
4. An electronic well file has been implemented, ensuring access to the most current data, and eliminating the
time consuming process of manual updates.
5. Various alarming principles have been implemented to ensure and improved detection, and reactivity to
production shortfalls and off-spec operations
6. Alarm aggregation enables detection and rapid identification of the most critical alarms and production
shortfalls
7. Scenario based alarm settings ensure that alarms are computed when relevant
8. Intuitive data visualization ensures that users can easily locate and drill down into the right data at the right
time.
9. A simple escalation process has been implemented based on user-defined business rules, demonstrating
rapid workflow development capabilities with built-in tools.
rd
10. Application-to-Application integration has been demonstrated between WRMS and a commercial 3 party
software application to perform automated Production Test Validation based on user-defined business rules.
Proactive well-reservoir management is the aim of the Well-Reservoir Monitoring System (WRMS). The ability to react
before a well shut down occurs, or to quickly return a well to production after experiencing a problem, is a considerable
business advantage. Having data readily available at the engineers fingertips, and being able to make quicker realtime decisions enables management to be more cost effective and efficient in achieving their long-term goals.
Removing the data management burden from knowledge workers allows them to better focus on engineering work,
and leverages the ability to use real-time data and real-time, instant communication into a strategic advantage.

References
1. M., Y. Charalambous, M.Crawford, C. Crawley, Bridging the Gap Between Real-Time Optimization and
Information-Based Technologies, paper SPE 116758, presented at SPE Annual Technical Conference and
Exhibition, Denver, Colorado, USA, 21-24 September 2008.
2. N. Hidayat, A. G. Mada, A. Muchsan, B. Ismayadi, Implementation of a Company-Wide Production Monitoring
System, paper SPE 54297, presented at the SPE Asia Pacific Oil & Gas Conference & Exhibition, Jakarta,
Indonesia, April 20-22 1999.