If you have a well designed to produce 1000 barrels per day and it only produces 800 barrels, how do you determine why? More importantly, can you understand how to remedy the issue and gain the additional 200 barrels? And then, can further production gains be achieved?
Ultimately, this is the question that every oil company needs to be able to answer for every well – quickly and easily, using analytics. This can be part of your solution for optimum management of your wells under your digital oilfield strategy to achieve production efficiency, lowest cost production, and prudent management of your wells.
Nodal analysis is the traditional tool for predicting well performance in the oil and gas industry. Operators can predict flowrates for different tubing sizes, water cut, tubing pressure, GOR, reservoir pressure, productivity index as well as predict performance using artificial lift. It’s great as a predictive tool, but when you encounter reality and the actual well performance is different, what then?
Pump Checker® is a powerful tool that analyzes well performance using a proprietary methodology combining physics-based models with analytics to automatically identify sub-performing wells and production increase opportunities when using artificial lift.
In one study in the Curito Field in Colombia, Pump Checker was implemented and provided immediate benefit for the operator. Using traditional nodal analysis, engineers could often take several hours to analyze a single production test on a single well. After implementing Pump Checker, an analysis was performed immediately, automatically on every well, every test.
In this case history, it was identified that the wells in the Curito field were wearing very quickly due to sand production. Based on this, it was recommended that future ESPs in the field have abrasion-resistant pump stages.
After the pilot program was completed, the Curito Field team implemented Pump Checker on 77 wells. The widespread use revealed many additional optimization opportunities, allowing the team to reduce costs and increase production.
It is surprising how many wells, with artificial lift, have problems that can be diagnosed and rectified. We see this all the time, which is why analysis, diagnosis, and optimization processes need to be automatic. For the cost of a latte per day from Starbucks, you can make this happen on every well. Whether you’re the engineer overseeing 100’s of wells, the manager of an asset, or the CEO of a company, suddenly your core focus – producing oil efficiently can be much easier.
Our industry is going through a massive ‘crew shift’ change. Over the last few months, I cannot believe how many artificial lift subject matter experts have been ‘let go’ or have retired.
Things are changing. Our industry workforce comprises Millennials - born with a computer in one hand and a remote in the other. They are very tech-savvy, think differently, connect differently, and learn differently. What tools will they need?
The short answer is Millennials expect the answer delivered immediately on their phone, tablet, or computer. Does your company’s IT system enable this? The days of spending hours digging through well files or even a LAN database to find reports, files, and information need to be history. Access to information needs to be immediate and automatic. More importantly, that information needs to have already been used, processed and converted into analysis that provides a business benefit. How does your company measure up?
Are you struggling to get started on a digital oilfield solution? Please contact us if you need assistance, our industry-leading software and wealth of experience can help you make a giant leap forward quickly.