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Smart Fields

The complexity of oil and gas fields calls for the understanding and management of a wide range of conditions – from the pressure, to the temperature, to the flow of the oil or gas.

The greater the understanding, the better a field and individual wells can be managed to achieve the best possible production results and access to more energy resources.

Control room monitoring every aspect of the reservoir.

Shell’s Smart Fields® are providing both the knowledge and the control by integrating digital information technology with the latest drilling, seismic and reservoir monitoring techniques. Combined with the experience of geologists, engineers and others, Smart Fields® can help increase the total amount of oil recovered from a field by 10 per cent and gas recovery by 5 per cent, while also boosting the rate of production.

Born smart
Champion West, located 90 km off the coast of Brunei in the South China Sea, is Shell’s flagship Smart Fields® project – the first field to be ‘born smart’. For 30 years Champion West lay dormant, its rich oil reserves locked 2,000 to 4,000 m (around 6,500 to 13,000 ft.) beneath the seabed in a complex web of thin reservoirs deemed too expensive to develop. But now Smart Fields® technology and new drilling techniques have turned Champion West into one of the world’s most advanced oil and gas fields.

From deep beneath Champion West’s seabed, sensors with fibre-optic cables relay digital information about temperature, pressure and other field conditions to control centres on land. This enables continuous monitoring of production, and engineers can make speedy decisions on how best to extract the maximum amount of oil, monitor its movement within the reservoir and instantly spot production problems, such as blockages. They can take action – for example, by activating well valves electronically - either to solve a problem or to increase production by better managing the oil flow.

Snake wells
One outcome of Shell’s Smart Fields® programme has been the creation of the Snake Well -a well that “snakes” back and forth across the oil-containing zones. Combined with smart technology, a single snake well can access multiple pockets of oil and achieve output equivalent to several individual wells – reducing cost and ensuring no oil is overlooked.