Challenges and rewards

In the early days of oil and gas production, companies developed assets with limited knowledge of how their strategies were influencing the reservoir. Unable to monitor reservoirs and wells continuously, engineers spent too much time looking for data and not enough time analysing it and using the resultant information to improve operational efficiency.

Today, oil and gas companies are under even more pressure to achieve flawless start-up; maximum recovery and extended commercial field life while maintaining asset integrity; maximal safety; and minimal greenhouse gas emissions.

Real-time production monitoring plays a key role in helping companies to achieve these objectives, and its effectiveness has recently been demonstrated in the demanding operating conditions encountered in Western Siberia.

Salym Petroleum Development NV (SPD), a joint venture between Shell Salym Development BV and OAO NK Evikhon, holds licences for three fields in the Salym area of Western Siberia. The operator decided to develop these assets and then optimise production by applying the latest, smart, real-time technologies to all its wells: in excess of 1,000 within the next few years.

The production wells at Salym are artificially lifted using electrical submersible pumps (ESP). SPD started an early water injection scheme in 2005. Applied to part of the development, this scheme aimed to provide pressure support in the developed area and gather early data on injectivity and waterflood performance. The pattern water injection scheme was expanded to the entire developed area after the commissioning of central water injection facilities in 2006.

At Salym, opportunities were seen to improve safety and increase production by monitoring and controlling the wells remotely and intervening by exception. This approach would reduce the ESP mean time between failures, and optimise the waterflood by injecting the right quantity and quality of water at the right pressure, time and place in the reservoir to maximise production.

Hence, SPD embarked on an ambitious oilfield management improvement programme that applies real-time optimisation (RTO) and integrated well and reservoir management (WRM) value loops on hourly, daily, monthly and annual timescales. As part of a Shell Smart Fields^® initiative, SPD uses Shell’s FieldWare^® real-time software applications, in combination with real-time control and monitoring systems, on its producing wells and reservoirs, and to operate the entire production, handling and injection systems.

“The vision for the Smart Fields project at Salym was that the reservoir management and production teams would have the information, workflows, tools and capabilities necessary to optimise field performance continuously,” Andrew Mabian, Smart Fields Project Manager, Salym Petroleum Development, explains. “This is an integral part of the WRM concept.”

To succeed, the project required SPD to develop skills and technical capabilities, and to select a proven system for monitoring and optimisation. The company selected Smart Fields Foundation Mark 1 FieldWare technology, tools and workflows.

The FieldWare software deployed in the Salym fields are the FieldWare ESP, FieldWare Well Test, FieldWare Production Universe^® Real-time Monitoring and FieldWare Production Universe Enhanced Oil Recovery modules. They provide real-time oil, gas and water flows for all production wells; full monitoring of production and injection trends; well operating parameters (frequencies, pressures and downhole signals); well test operations; water supply, handling and injection well operations; and remote control of the ESPs installed on the 350 producing wells (remote frequency changes for optimisation and stopping and starting).

“In Salym, the FieldWare ESP control software, along with FieldWare Production Universe software, provides the current operating point on the pump performance curve/operating envelope for enhanced real-time performance monitoring,” says Ron Cramer, Senior Adviser, Shell Global Solutions International BV. “This enables the operatives to monitor pump performance remotely in real time and to change the working parameters if required.”

The ESP analytical software module gives a robust tool for finding, in real time, the optimal operation conditions based on motor and pump operating parameters, and well properties. The automatic notification system sends ESP alarm notifications by email for proactive troubleshooting.

SPD has used FieldWare software to turn real-time production system data into valuable information about its wells and reservoirs. Experience at Salym shows that the comprehensive surveillance, analysis and well-control capabilities of the FieldWare system have helped to enable continuous field optimisation and performance gains.

These include workload optimisation (Lean); higher production and injection availability; increased production; fewer unscheduled deferments (faster response to operating changes); lower operating expenditure; safeguarded system integrity; reduced operator exposure to hazards. The improvements have helped to increase recovery factors, enable more effective management of the assets and improve safety performance.

Implementation of Smart Fields technology is a key enabler to SPD’s WRM programme. “It has reduced the number of ESP trips, minimised unscheduled deferment volumes and enabled higher production and injection availability. The quantified benefits to date include an 8% improvement in ESP run life, an unscheduled deferments reduction of 0.3% and operation of 30% more wells with no staff increase,” concludes Andrew Mabian.

The real-time optimisation applications being applied at the Salym fields are helping SPD to make the most of its assets by maximising production and minimising costs. These powerful technologies are industry leading in being able to deliver continuous allocation of production to wells and reservoirs. They automatically report production and deferment, and can help to increase operating and production efficiency, speed up the identification and rectification of production problems, improve safety and moderate greenhouse gas emissions. An additional benefit is the increase in co-operation and communication between oilfield disciplines.

Integration across disciplines has helped to improve well optimisation performance. The variation in flowing bottomhole pressure, a key optimisation parameter on the producing wells, significantly reduced in a 12-month period across all wells: the improvement was larger on those wells that have been fitted with FieldWare technology. Another benefit, which is particularly important in the harsh Siberian climate, is that travel and work execution times associated with optimisation are shorter.

“Operations staff at Salym can now control and operate more wells remotely in real time while minimising their exposure to health and safety risks,” Cramer explains. “The deployment of these technologies and the introduction of the associated workflow processes have helped to significantly reduce the time spent looking for data and enable staff to spend more time analysing data and solving problems.”

Download the full article