Page 44 - Intelligent Digital Oil And Gas Fields

24 Intelligent Digital Oil and Gas Fields

improvements. The assessment quantified an overall benefit of $5 per oil
barrel when the crude oil price was $30 per STB. The Smart Field program
contributed to an additional production of 70,000STB/d. Reduction in
capital expenditure (CAPEX) was estimated at $800 million. After successful
implementation of the Smart field program, Shell implemented worldwide
an integrated production system model (IPSM) that models and tracks pro-
duction problems, such as pipeline bottlenecking, well with solid intake,
erosional choke, electric submersible pump (ESP) downtime, and separator
pressure issues.

1.6.3.2 Field of the Future
BP (2017a,b) stated that in 2007 its Field of the Future (FoF) program deli-
vered between 30 and 50MBOE/D of gross production. BP has installed
1750km of submarine fiber optic cable, linking its subsea wells to its world-
wide operations. The company has set up a dedicated big data and analytics
innovation laboratory in its Center for High-Performance Computing
(CHPC) in Houston. BP also has invested significant engineering effort
and CAPEX to apply digital technologies to model hydrocarbon flow in
its Gulf of Mexico (GoM) facilities to add more production at lower cost
per barrel. BP’s Model-Based Operational Support (MBOS) program uses
real-time surveillance to identify ways of enhancing operating performance;
for example, the giant Thunder Horse field in the GoM monitors the
buildup of harmful asphaltenes, so that this problem can be mitigated, sig-
nificantly reducing costly blockages in wells and risers. Sophisticated digital
optimization technology is also being used to overcome a common industry
problem—unstable flow in pipelines and risers, known as slugging, which
can cause platforms to be temporarily shut down. BP’s slug controller tech-
nology uses real-time measurements and complex algorithms to identify
slugs as they form and automatically adjusts choke settings to stabilize flow
without stopping production. In this way, costly manual interventions can
be avoided and production stabilized.

1.6.3.3 KwIDF Program
After the successful implementation of three major DOF systems, KOC
didan18-monthevaluationofthe value added by its intelligent systems.
Al-Jasmi et al. (2013) and Yunus et al. (2014) reported a significant oil
gain of 8% per day, per well by increasing water injection by up to
14 MSTB of water in a total area of 60 wells, in wells subjected to a