S06 ORA 5 2020 Ariel Corporation Client_ORA Master Template - 2016 New 15/10/2020 09:05 Page 22
DIG ITAL TECH NOLOGY
ISSUE 5 2020 • WWW.OILREVIEWAFRICA.COM
HOW TO DYNAMICALLY ACT
UPON DOWNHOLE INSIGHTS? In-well fibre optic technology can lead to production improvements in the order of several hundred million dollars per asset.
RODUCTION BENEFITS OF hundreds of millions of dollars per asset can be realised through the use of in-well fibre optic technology when the vast amounts of data produced are managed and translated rapidly into actionable insights. This is according to a white paper from LYTT, specialist data analytics solutions provider for industrial assets. Prad Thiruvenkatanathan, cofounder and chief product and technology officer, LYTT, said, “Oil and gas companies have a huge data opportunity. On the one hand, they can continue as they have been, basing multimillion-dollar production decisions on little to no information, or make the choice to invest in the real-time insights they need.” While the oil and gas industry started to install fibre optic cables in hydrocarbon wells three decades ago, these networks are substantially underused despite their potential to lead to significant production improvements with the emergence of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). Companies are wary of DAS technology because of the vast amount of data it produces, and the capacity and skillset required to turn this data into something that can immediately add value to operations.
Image Credit: JT Jeeraphun/Adobe Stock
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More than ever, the industry needs to work collaboratively and empower operators to manage risks with proven technologies.
As a result, operators have become accustomed to making multi-million-dollar operational decisions based on data collected intermittently and that only offers a snapshot of well performance.
Optimising profitability will be vital in 2020 and beyond Lytt provides a solution to address the data volume issues. By leveraging fibre optic cables working as downhole sensors, insights are generated that solve fundamental challenges to production in hydrocarbon wells such as inflow phase and flow profiling; outflow profiling; sand identification and well integrity analysis. Using hybrid analytics, this data can provide a real-time view of changes in production, enabling operators to act upon
the downhole insights dynamically. As the oil and gas industry continues to face substantial challenges in the form of fluctuating oil prices driven by economic shocks and geopolitical battles and increasing pressure on governments and corporates to cut their environmental impact, optimising profitability and efficiency will be vital throughout 2020 and beyond. In the white paper “Raising Recovery Rates in Real-Time,” LYTT demonstrates how hybrid analytics enable oil and gas firms to profit from underused fibre optic networks and boost efficiency and well production in real-time. The white paper has further highlighted three challenges producers face when dealing with legacy or remediated assets. These include sand detection,
well integrity and flow profiling. It also explains how hybrid analytics can help owners and operators tackle these issues. “In this time of uncertainty, the industry needs to work collaboratively and empower operators to proactively manage risks with proven technologies. We have already seen results of several hundred million dollars across a group of assets by adding production, managing integrity and increasing field recovery,” stated Thiruvenkatanathan. Thiruvenkatanathan continued, “There is no question that oil and gas will remain an important part of the global economy for many years to come. But companies need to ensure their operations are as sustainable as possible by maximising the production from existing wells and reducing the need for further drilling or infrastructure.”
