The Digitalization of Well Intervention Operations: From Proof of Concept to Proof of Scale
Authors: Monteiro Da Cunha Maisa , Aldren Laura Helen , Desta Kibir , Carnegie Donald , Howells Mckenzie William , Seal Daniel 
Published: October 2022

Objective/Scope

As fields mature, the need to perform well interventions drastically increases. The process of identifying, requesting, and preparing an intervention is complex and data can be neither reliable nor easily accessible. Well Guardian, an innovative digital tool, was developed to improve well health monitoring and to reduce time-to-intervention by optimizing engineering processes and providing well data to engineers quickly.

Methods, Procedures, Process

Well Guardian followed the Scrum process, a specific Agile methodology that serves to facilitate a project. Scrum provides a framework for developing, delivering and sustaining products in a complex environment and relies on incremental development, typically done in uniform iterations called Sprints.

Framing of the digital tool started in January 2021 and its first deployment in the UK affiliate was in June 2021 (initially to cover two assets). Subsequent features and functionalities of Well Guardian were released iteratively, achieving full scale-up to all the affiliate assets in September 2021.

Results, Observations, Conclusions

Well Guardian is the result of an exceptional collaboration between technical disciplines enabled by a dedicated digital team. It has solved a variety of obstacles by centralizing many disparate data sources into one accessible portal. The outcome: it provides a single source of truth and live well monitoring, generating economic business value in less than one year.

Well Guardian enables engineers to prioritize their time on the more complex parts of a well intervention, encouraging a proactive rather than reactive approach. The digitalization of the previously manual Well Intervention Request (WIR) process is an example of Well Guardian successfully optimizing an engineering process. The digital WIR allows all stakeholders to have clarity and visibility on the planning and execution of interventions; completing activities is more efficient and thus, restoring wells to their full production potential and accelerating production is possible at a quicker rate.

Well Guardian's monitoring of real-time well data improves the transparency of a well's health and reduces the time taken to review a well. Both benefits enable safer interventions by: Identifying outstanding safety actions.Automatically notifying when annuli pressures reach operating limits, helping onsite operators and well integrity engineers in anticipating potential integrity threats.Automatically notifying for expiring exemption to standards, enabling teams to prepare renewals more efficiently together with more rigorous risk assessments.Automatically notifying users when a well's behavior enters an apparent anomalous state, detecting the early symptoms of a well intervention.Including mandatory subtasks related to integrity/safety/chemical checks in the digitalized WIR.

Novel / Additive Information

Well Guardian is a collaborative digital tool bringing the Drilling & Wells, Field Operations and Geoscience disciplines together, bridging the silos between them and consequently improving the overall efficiency and performance of the affiliate.

It is a multidisciplinary, integrated digital platform that enables data visualization and analytics, while enhancing data quality and reliability by centralizing more than ten different database systems.