Page 12 - Intelligent Digital Oil And Gas Fields

PREFACE

Digitalization of oil and gas operations started several decades ago using
supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems to gather data
on high-cost producing assets, such as offshore, and to replace electrome-
chanical paper chart recorders. In the last decade—driven by some key tech-
nology trends, such as reduced costs for sensors and data storage (Big Data)
and ubiquitous communication—the industry is seeing more
implementations of what we all know as the digital oil field (DOF). In gen-
eral, DOF refers to acquiring high-frequency data, even streaming real-time
data, and using that data to increase production efficiency, reduce down-
time, implement field-wide efficiencies, and optimize reservoir recovery
and management.
While DOF implementations are increasing, as of 2017, the oil and gas
(O&G) industry still faces many challenges to achieving full implementation
of and maximum value from DOF solutions. Many different industries—
such as mobile communications, medical, computers, social media, retail,
and industries, such as airlines—report that more than 70% of previously
manual processes are now automated and connected in real time to data-
driven solutions or the Internet of things (IoT), leading to faster responses
and increased operational efficiency. But surveys and news articles from
the O&G industry suggest that less than 25% of all firms surveyed are con-
nected to real-time operational data, and the percentage of operating wells
that have digital real-time data is less than 10%.
Early on, many O&G firms thought that the DOF was simply “IT”
(information technology) or “data management.” While we now know that
DOF is so much more, the low numbers from these survey results led us to
believe that many companies are still struggling to figure out how to imple-
ment DOF solutions and realize the promise of its value to operations and
business.
We have been fortunate to work on some ground-breaking DOF pro-
jects that have delivered on the operational and business performance results.
These projects leveraged technology and related cost breakthroughs in areas
such as sensors, wireless connectivity, storage, computations, data analytics,
process engineering, and automation and control.
We were motivated to write this book to share our experiences in
implementing such solutions, and in identifying and overcoming the many

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