Introduction to this special section: Permanent monitoring, smart oil fields, and reservoir surveillance

Abstract

The world demand for oil has continued to increase, and the costs of oil-field development have kept pace. As a consequence, increasing the recovery factor has become a major objective for many development and production teams. To that end, considerable effort has been expended in the development of geophysical technologies for reservoir surveillance and performance optimization, including permanent monitoring systems and smart wells that provide a continuous flow of geophysical measurements and data. These data are delivered in real, or so-called “relevant” time and significantly improve our ability to monitor and improve production rates, troubleshoot under-performing wells, and help better place new wells.