E&P Notes (May 2015)

Abstract

E&P Notes Lessons From the Aviation Industry on Automation Trent Jacobs, JPT Senior Technology Writer One of the defining features of the 21st century will undoubtedly be the changing relationship between humans and automated machines. The aviation industry has long been a champion of automation and in March, three experts from this field offered their insights to oil and gas professionals about how the technology continues to be qualified and adopted. The presentations were made in London at the SPE’s Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section (DSATS) and IADC Advanced Rig Technology symposium, which is held each year on the eve of the SPE/IADC Drilling Conference and Exhibition. Faster Recognition Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor A project to predict how much carbon dioxide injected into an oil field is likely to remain there forever set off the US Department of Energy (DOE) on a search for faster data analysis methods. Speed matters because making projections going out as far as 1,000 years using a probabilistic model (Monte Carlo) will require long computing times, which are costly. DOE is trying to limit the total time by seeking quicker, lower-cost ways to generate the required data inputs by finding reasonably accurate methods that are faster than multiple processing runs of a full-field reservoir simulation model. Tough Tracers Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor A new miniature pressure/temperature sensor comes packaged inside a tough small ball capable of traveling to the bottom of a well while drilling and returning with data on board. The outer shell of the ball allows electrical components printed on a circuit board to survive a trip in the drilling mud to the bottom of the well, survive a close encounter with the drill bit, and return with readings along the way that can be wirelessly downloaded. Creators of the balls are seeking a lower-cost alternative to logging tools located behind the drill bit. The tracer was created by a company started by Mengjiao Yu, an assistant professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Tulsa, with backing from Saudi Aramco. Corrosion Prediction Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor There are oil fields in Saudi Arabia with many, long-lived wells and not enough inspection equipment to frequently check all the pipes for corrosion damage. “With a limited number of corrosion logging tools, we cannot cover all of them in 1 or 2 years,” said Mohammed AlAjmi, a production engineer for Saudi Aramco, who estimated that it would take 5 years with the available equipment in a presentation at the SPE Digital Energy Conference and Exhibition in The Woodlands, Texas. To reduce the risk of undetected corrosion damage inside and outside the casing, AlAjmi developed a method to predict which wells were at the highest risk of damage using data-driven models and artificial intelligence methods.