Leveraging Digital Technology in Design and Development of Production Surveillance Strategies to Sustain and Improve Hydrocarbon Wealth of an Entire Nation
Authors: Gupta Vipin Prakash , Masoudi Rahim , Yati Noriani , Razali W A , Zakaria W Atikahsari 
Published: November 2019

Consider the sheer diversity and magnitude of data related to approximately 1000 reservoirs mapped to 100+ oil and gas assets across three land masses. Now spread that across more than 10 operators and 3000 wells. This is the challenge underlying the hydrocarbon scene of Malaysia. Technical and operational problems associated with such a scenario include mature reservoirs supporting wells that are more than 20+ years old, well integrity issues, late life declines, increasing frequency of unplanned deferments, sand production, scaling and souring, to name a few. The high cost factors, due to the off-shore environment, combined with the uphill task to sustain production, adds to the challenge of Managing Malaysia's assets.

As regulator and host authority for all hydrocarbon resources in Malaysia, Malaysian Petroleum Management (MPM) is using digital technology to design and develop production surveillance strategies to tackle the situation. PACE (PETRONAS Asset Performance Centre) has been developed as an integrated platform to deliver solutions that encompass data consolidation to visualization to KPI management, monitoring and tracking. Designed essentially to improve, enhance & speed up decision and aid decision making process, PACE is central to developi ng a holistic point of view (HPOV).

The key methodology used to analyze local/ national trends and leveraging them to drive performance lies in extensive development of benchmarks & setting up of automated tracking mechanisms that will trigger alert response system in case of deviation. The multi operator production environment, a full spectrum of sub-surface complexity, varied development strategies depending upon the time and operating company presents itself as a perfect set up for implementing the technology.

A simple example to illustrate the point can be seen in production enhancement and idle well restoration activities. There are literally hundreds of jobs happening on yearly basis which engage a number of vendors, technologies, equipment and can be categorized in various of job types.

Benchmarking these activities even on a national level helps immensely to identify clearly what is working and what is not when it comes to job efficiency, operator delivery and return against investment. The results can than drive strategy for replication and improving in the following years. The next level would be introduction of Regional Benchmarks initiating collaboration across borders.

The architecture of the system has been designed to act as integrator that can accept, assimilate and integrate. As time moves we plan to augment the information related to costs, facilities performance, maintenance commitments etc.. The surveillance based strategy setting will be a natural outcome. Authors propose that the designed system can be applied to NOCs or major operators owning and operating multiple assets to drive better efficiency and higher profits