Digital Solution for Production Optimization and Production Losses Estimation Using Data Analytics in Real Time in a Brown Field
Authors: Quevedo Hugo , Marchán Luis , Sepúlveda Willem , Calvache Galo , Bonilla Christian , Dávalos Santiago , Guillén Wilson , Tacuri Jaime , Ramos Geovanny , Cattani Marcelo , Chicango Edgar , Pineda Alexander 
Published: October 2022

In an aging field, where the intensive activity of new wells and interventions are taking place, commingled production is established and water flooding project is reaching maturity, it is of paramount importance to have high frequency, high accuracy production data to fine-tune models, to evaluate, and to estimate optimization impacts and to reduce potential deferred losses. A digital solution was implemented to allow early identification of events, estimate production losses, and thus classify and prioritize events for optimizations using data analytics.

Production monitoring and optimization have been difficult to accomplish because of problems at surfacefacilities such as cross flow at manifold valves, shared production lines, unstable production from commingledwells and low well test repeatability. Low well test repeatability was caused by a reduced number of operative equipment such as separators and multiphase flowmeters. With the application of big data and data analytics, a virtual flowmeter (VFM) was created, calibrated and run-in real time for several pilot wells. The virtual flowmeter (VFM) uses the electric submersible pump (ESP) data and the fluid characteristics, integrated with a dashboard from a business intelligence tool that was developed to rank critical wells to intervene for optimizations.

The pilot application enables us to quantify the volume lost during operative events in the wells, as well as the gained production from optimization activities, integrating a powerful production monitoring and electrical submersible pump (ESP) parameters surveillance tool to guarantee the continuity of operations, maximize well optimizations, and increase operational efficiency and productivity on real time. An average of 475 BOPD are associated with deferred production. Using a data-base platform and the connectivity provided by a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) fiber-optics, all the variables can be monitored in real time to develop data analytics and make an early identification of events, give a rapid response and to reduce the production losses. This digital implementation has shown remarkable results, enabling us to reduce 80% of our manual processing time, optimizing our field operator's mobilizations, reduced transport time, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions/year, and mobilizations risk, reducing the response time from days to minutes, and ensuring the operative continuity of the production, optimizing costs, maximizing people's efficiency, and evolving the monitoring process.

This paper shows the pilot wells selection, the VFM creation using data analytics, calibration, and connections to run the digital application in real time with a dashboard from a business intelligence tool. This solution is a clear example of what the digital transformation capability brings to any oilfield, showing the industry that is not only an example of optimizing production, but also to demonstrate that edge computing, data analytics, and data science can be applied at all maturity levels in oil and gas fields becoming a game changer for the next generations.