Page 28: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Jan/Feb 2020)

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FEATURE Drilling & Completions

Shedding (fiber) light on wells

On the surface, in-well surveillance and monitoring seems like an obvious and bene? cial thing to do. Learning about what’s happening in wells can mean operators can make them produce more, change injection or gas-lift, methodologies,

Source: Equinor unlock shut-in wells. Elaine Maslin looks at recent activity.

he range of tools and the capabilities of those whole story; surveillance using tools pre-installed in the tools have been improving year-on-year with the well isn’t counted because it’s not an intervention or well data they’re able to gather growing fast. From access activity. Nevertheless, Michael Hannan, formerly of listening to what’s happening or monitoring the the OGA, points to knowing of three wells in the North

T temperature in a well, they can infer, for example, the exact Sea with permanently installed ? ber optic monitoring location of water breakthrough, if a valve has shut or not technology (other monitoring technologies are available). or even the type and quantity of ? uids ? owing through a “We are in a really poor place,” says Brown. “We have well. If anything, more data can be created by these tech- nearly 2,500 active wells and last year less than 60 in-well nologies than operators currently know what to do with. surveillance activities. Our perspective is that this feels wrong.

Some of these technologies were outlined at the SPE’s “If a well is fully instrumented, with electric submersible

Inwell Surveillance and Monitoring seminar in Aberdeen, pumps and it’s being tested every couple of weeks, zero is

UK, late last year. But, so was a paradox; very little surveil- probably ? ne. But a lot of ? elds don’t have that. It’s about lance is being done in the UK North Sea despite the avail- understanding the opportunity and moving forward. I’d able technologies. expect 20% surveillance rates. Why would you not do

The Oil & Gas Authority’s (OGA) Glenn Brown point- that? It’s low hanging fruit. We are scratching our heads. ed to ? gures from 2018, which showed that of 550 well Why are we not doing more of this?” intervention activities across the UK’s 2200 well stock, The lack of surveillance is perhaps one of the reasons just 58 were for surveillance (in 2017 the total number of that the number of shut-in wells in 2018 remains exactly interventions was 627). The numbers might not tell the the same as in 2017 – at 30% of the total. No one is look-

Image above: Equinor has been using ? ber optics on its Johan Sverdrup and is planning to use it on Martin Linge wells.

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