Petroleum Experts

The Digital Oil Field

R E A L T I M E F I E L D M A N A G E M E N T

The Digital Oil Field

When we talk of the digital oil field what do we mean?
The Digital Oil Field captures the behaviour of the oil field on the PC, with its applications being an online management system of the oil and gas companys assets throughout their entire lifecycle. The Petroleum Experts digital oil field technology provides an enterprise-level, vendor-neutral approach to visualising information, enabling rational decisions to be made through using models, workflows and data within an multi-disciplinary organisation of diverse capabilities and engineering skill sets.
Visualisation of field data, analysis, trends at all levels in real time

Core elements of the Petroleum Experts Digital Oil Field:

Visualisation - This provides a coherent view of an oil field, integrating data sets, including the engineering models, production, economics, with visualisation capability in an organised way. Benefiting from the power of a single asset and data model, the visual screens are upgraded and extended automatically with a push of a button as the oil field develops. Engineering and Business Management Logic - The tasks and procedures, i.e. workflows, that the teams carry out to monitor, operate, optimise and develop the field can be automated through a layer of logic - business and engineering workflows. This establishes common best

practices across the global organisation using standard workflows, that are out-of-the-box best-practice procedures for field surveillance, optimisation, diagnostics, allocation and forecasting. Custom workflows can be easy added to the logic layer by the user. The automation of standard tasks, frees the engineering and management teams to concentrate on the added-value activities. Organisation and Auditing - Alignment of the teams, processes and the technology are core to any successful digital oil field implementation. A single repository of the models, data and information for a field allows the organisation to develop a consistent and coherent view of their asset. This common official field representation, the virtual field, records an auditable history of the field over its life. The use of a centralised model and data catalogue can help break down a "siloed" view of single technical disciplines. Moreover, storing the field events and recording the decisions is the foundation for engineering knowledge capture, required for an "expert" system. Data Management - Today, the instrumented fields have a huge volume of measurements coming from wells and equipment sensors often millions of data points from one field, per minute. Making the relevant measurement and data (validated measurements) available at the frequency required, necessitates sophisticated data storage, management, cleansing and filtering of the data, suitable for the required tasks. A scalable, upgradable and extensible data technology has to be at the heart of effective long-term data management, hence productising of the data management through a single-asset data model is a fundamental. The Virtual Field - This is a physical representation of the field through a set of models, i.e. mathematical representations of each component of the field - from reservoir, production and injection network and wells, to the process, economics and planning tools. These multivendor sets of steady and transient models are dynamically linked as an Integrated Production Model to represent and capture the current field response, as well optimise field production and run forecasts.

The Structure of the Digital Oil Field

Historically, Petroleum Experts pioneered the integrated production modelling and management. Today, the direction is to put these
integrated models under a digital oil field system in order to diagnose, validate and - most importantly - optimise the field production automatically using real-time data.

This concept was developed as a product as opposed to a project, allowing very short time of deployment, upgrade as well as scale up. Automatic data model, automatic management and auditing of models as well as intelligent data gathering allow the engineers to focus on the added-value activities. The system also supports the distribution of best practices across the enterprise through the use of workflows.

Visualisation - Digital Oil Field

Scalable Visualisation technology by Petroleum Experts supports multiple windows everything from virtual reality to spreadsheets, teleconferences and the handheld phone all driven by the familiar interface. Using the technology is just like operating a PC but achieving an overall operational visibility on a massive scale. Scalable desktop display systems can be easily integrated with the users existing network infrastructure, allowing information sharing between remote sites. This enables workgroups and international teams to be more productive by allowing them to work collaboratively. The visualisation layer is a standalone product, bringing together the data, information and results from multiple data sources. Petex have set three fundamental criteria in developing Digital Oil Field technology (DOF). The underlying field, types of model and information (data) is evolving overtime, hence it is fundamental the DOF products deliver the following: Maintainability of the real-time system - e.g. how do we add equipment - a well - to the digital system as the field is developed. This should be straightforward and not require Petex's or another vendor's time to update and maintain field system and tags - the asset model. Add equipment as propagate from the asset model to the visualisation layer at a push of a button. Scalability - one field has 10 wells and one reservoir, another will have a 100 to 1000 wells and multiple reservoirs. Can the system be deployed easily to tens of fields per year or are we limited by resources - skilled people, i.e. can a real-time system be implemented in days or weeks, rather than many months or years? The Petex Digital Oil Field suite are products and can be deployed and configured in days, even for large fields and systems. Upgradability of the system - can the client upgrade at a push of a button the Digital Oil Field System with a new software version or add tools and capabilities? A system that cannot be easily upgraded will become obsolete very soon.
Visualisation create value, linking operations, studies groups, management as part of global multi-disciplinary organisation using consistent information

Key Performance indicators (KPIs)

Visualisation of field data, analysis, trends at all levels in real time

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The Collaboration Centre

The Role of the Visualisation System

The visualisation layer is the face of the Digital Oil Field, which requires the underlying engineering logic, data management and models to allow the organisation to effectively monitor, manage and operate the field. It provides a coherent view of an oil field, integrating data sets, including the engineering, production, economic, with

visualisation capability in an organised way. With visualisation technology, data and results are exposed to engineers, operators, managers and any other users of the system in visual formats, which can be easily configured.

Engineering and Business Management Logic

The Petroleum Experts digital oil field technology provides an enterprise-level, vendor-neutral approach to visualising information, enabling rational decisions to be made through use of models, workflows and data within a multi-disciplinary organisation of diverse capabilities and engineering skill sets. In reaching its targets, the modern oil and gas industry face challenges to manage assets in conventional fields and unlock the potential previously considered non-economic. The industry faces challenges in: supporting field developments with functional specialists remote from the asset and operations; demographics of its ageing workforce; more data/information to process; large uncertainties with the billion-dollar new developments; and a shortage of skilled professionals. Information and knowledge is often not shared, which can create competing and at times contradictory demands. The Digital Oil Field technology of Petroleum Experts is designed to provide the field and model management activities under one platform as standard out-of-the-box workflows. By automating the model management updates using the real-time data and operational information, the engineers are able to spend their time primarily on addedvalue activities and analysis while allowing the DOF platform to process the data and workflows. The workflows will report the results, exceptions and any technical recommendations for the engineer to further analyse. The standard activities (workflows) for all oil and gas fields are: Understand how the field is performing (field surveillance): production system surveillance; reservoir surveillance; Improve field performance (optimisation): short-term and/or long-term optimisation; Predict how the field will behave under different conditions (what if scenarios and forecasting): field development analysis; business planning; life of field forecast; sensitivity plus uncertainties analysis. The Petroleum Experts DOF technology provides a platform for executing model-based workflows, including: model management, rate estimation, model-based surveillance and diagnostics, allocation, optimisation, forecasting, custom client- or asset-specific workflows as defined by the user. Petroleum Experts Integrated Field Management approach is productised. The whole system becomes completely supportable by the clients company after implementation avoiding the delays and costs associated with internal or external consultants. The technology is completely scalable, since it creates automatically data model objects, which, in turn means that when a new well or equipment is created these are automatically reflected across the whole system. Moreover, any upgrade is achieved at a push of a button, which migrates the databases and installs the executables without losing any of the previous configurations.

The standard logic for model updates, optimisation, well rate allocation and forecasting

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Monitoring the operating point of equipment in real time (ESP) Real-time calculations logic using real-time data, measurements and models to calculate results

Real Time Field Management Through Standard Workflows

Engineering and Business Management Logic The tasks and procedures, i.e. workflows, that the teams carry out to monitor, operate, optimise and develop the field can be automated through a layer of logic - business and engineering workflows. This establishes common best practices across the global organisation using standard

workflows, that are out-of-the-box best-practice procedures for field surveillance, optimisation, diagnostics, allocation and forecasting. Custom workflows can be easily added to the logic layer by the user. The automation of standard tasks, frees the engineering and management teams to concentrate on the added-value activities.

The Virtual Field

To manage and operate a field, Petroleum Experts developed suite of modelling tools, which are the bestin-class and recognised by the oil and gas industry as its global standard. These tools carry out the calculations required to diagnose, analyse, model, allocate and optimise the production, using robust engineering, fluids and physical models. The Petroleum Experts IPM suite can be integrated with third party applications, including the main industry reservoir and process simulators, as well as other transient and steady state technology.

Summary of the IPM suite of tools:

RESOLVE is an advanced engineering studies tool integrating models with events, scheduling, scenarios that can be launched on standalone PCs or on computer clusters. The underlying IPM or third party models: the reservoir(s), producers and injectors, surface gathering network, process and economics; are integrated through RESOLVE. The PVT can be black oil to fully compositional, where proprietary lumping-delumping techniques are used. RESOLVE also provides the fastest and most advanced global optimisation techniques found in the industry. GAP is a multiphase oil and gas non-linear optimiser tool that models the surface gathering network of field production and injection systems. Linked with the well models of PROSPER and reservoir models of MBAL (or simulators via RESOLVE), a full field production optimisation and forecast are run. GAP can model production systems containing oil, gas and condensate, in addition to gas or water injection systems. PROSPER is for modelling well performance, well design and optimisation for most types well configurations found in the worldwide oil and gas industry today. MBAL is the analytical reservoir model, which helps the engineer better define reservoir drive mechanisms and hydrocarbon volumes. MBAL contains the classical reservoir engineering tool and has redefined the use of material balance in modern reservoir engineering. REVEAL is a specialised study reservoir simulation model for understanding more complex physical phenomena of well and reservoir response accounting for the thermal, geo-mechanics and chemistry effects. PVTP is a tool for the production or reservoir engineer to use to predict the effect of process conditions on the composition of hydrocarbon mixtures with accuracy and speed. The compositional behaviour of complex mixtures including gas mixtures, gas condensates, retrograde condensates, volatile oils and black oils as well as flow assurance can be interpreted and predicted with confidence. OpenServer is the open standard protocol to run any IPM application from the outside or as part of a third party tool.

Modelling: from reservoir all the way to the process

The IPM suite

The IPM and Third Party Engineering Modelling Tools

Petroleum Experts Integrated Production Modelling suite (IPM) is deployed on its own or as part of set of multi-vendor modelling applications that capture the full characteristics and response of the field, the Virtual Field. Having a model of the field is a prerequisite for implementing the Digital Oil Field. The IPM suite is the industry standard with most international oil and gas companies.

The Virtual Field - This is a physical representation of the field through a set of models, i.e. mathematical representations of each component of the field - from reservoir, production and injection network and wells, to the process, economics and planning tools.

The Organisation
The overall objective of a company or an asset team is generally clear, i.e. the commercial and technical drivers are understood. However, an individual or a particular set of technical discipline may often have a limited view and understanding of the field reality to make the correct decisons. The correct information is often not readily available. The diagram below illustrates in a simplistic way of addressing the challenges to successfully implement the digital oil field. Model Management and auditing - Model Catalogue: The single view, the Virtual Field, composed on the engineering models, reports, spread-sheets and associated data when stored in a central repository and, most importantly being updated and maintained as the field is developed and produces, will facilitate a clearer understanding and awareness of the field. Petroleum Experts describes this repository as the ModelCatalogue: Provides controlled access to the individual models, reports, data and even schematics (different privileges, according to the engineers roles); Ensures only one engineer can perform changes to the official model at a given time; Ensures seamless sharing of models; Keeps track of the evolution of all models versus time and provides access to historical version - if required - in an automated way; Provides seamless access to any on-line system, which will be consuming these models to carry out calculations; Keeps track of who and why performed changes (for auditing and knowledge base development); Allows the association of models with their corresponding input data to keep both models and context data related. For example, the PVT reports, Well and Equipment Drawings, deviations surveys and other documents can be kept catalogued within the same Model Management System. Knowledge Capture Engineering know-how and experience are of paramount importance for the oil and gas companies. The growing scarcity of experienced workers is creating an experience gap that Integrated Field Management technology may help to bridge. Capturing the expert knowledge in an organised and structured manner and supporting collaboration reliably and securely in real time becomes one of the viable channels to increase productivity and fuel a companys ability to grow. The expert knowledge capture within the Petroleum Experts DOF philosophy is supported by introduction of individuals experience into workflows and analysis. The technology described has proven to be a powerful enabler - a catalyst - to create the organisational thinking and transparency to allow the implementation of the successful digital oil field vision. The combined engagement of the organisations management, at all levels, as well as the asset team members will ensure actions are transparent, knowledge is shared and decisions are made with all the available information. This will create value.

Common Model and Data Source

Through implementing the Digital Oil Field structure set out in these pages, the managed environment of common data management, model management, standard workflows and a visualisation system will provide the technical framework - this is the enabler - to allow the organisation to better analyse, manage and operate their field.

A Data Structure for the ModelCatalogue

An Organisation: Alignment is a Challenge

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The engagement of the organisation is critical

Organisation and Auditing Alignment of the teams, processes and the technology are core to any successful digital oil field implementation. A single repository of the models, data and information for a field allows the organisation to develop a consistent and coherent view of their asset. This common official field representation, the virtual field,

records an auditable history of the field over its life. The use of a centralised model and data catalogue can help break down the siloed views of single technical disciplines. Moreover, storing the field events and recording the decisions made is the foundation for engineering knowledge capture, required for an expert system.

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Data Management
The Petroleum Experts Digital Oil Field (DOF) technology enables the transformation of the myriad of different types of data using standard industry applications alongside the Petex tools as will be needed by the DOF system described in this document. Data Management, as part of the digital oil field, has several key components: The historians, databases and data storages all designed to store the real time, as well as operational and associated static data, files and information for the asset; The production data management system (PDMS); The data-processing layer provides filtered and partially processed data to the users. The Historian and Production Data Management System There are a number of historian and PDMS systems in the industry, which capture raw data, process and store information, provide corporate allocation, etc. as well as supplying varying levels data processing, cleansing and filtering. In the context of the DOF, a sophisticated level of data cleansing and data filtering is deployed by Petex to analyse raw data, capture the meaningful field events and provide meaningful correctly representative filtered information. Data Filtering and Cleansing The filtering methodology developed by Petex uses a unique proprietary, as well as the more common published filtering methodologies. Petexs proprietary method provides more sophisticated filtering, using the raw data, physical model responses and expert system to detect changes and hence rationalise data, based on event-driven activities and trends, as illustrated below, right. To detect field events, e.g. equipment performance changes, or to trigger valid alarms, may require raw data to be analysed at a later time, evaluating historical trends and the physical models to determine if something has happened or changed. This is smart filtering. This robust data filtering solution interprets the multitude of data streams to ensure the relevant data is supplied to enable decision-making: High Frequency Data (e.g. measurements coming from the field, including current field conditions, field equipment performance, etc.) enables: alarm monitoring, event detection and well test analysis. Low Frequency Data is used for the Physical Models and to support processing of field data to convert it into meaningful engineering information to be able to predict how the field will respond when conditions change. Single Asset Data Models for the Digital Oil Field A challenge for any DOF system in is to handle the data requirement of multiple applications and users. Typically, this requires data to be input in several location. Petex has created one data or asset model, which is propagated throughout the system, i.e. if a well or a piece of equipment is added, the information is automatically made available for each part of the DOF system to use. Moreover, the same concept is used to link the external PDMS and Historians systems using data wizards to configure the tags and required links. The wizards follow a step-by-step pattern to meet the objective of establishing and testing connection to the external data sources through to tag mapping and configuration of data retrieval. Any new tag mappings, modifications to existing tag mappings, field measurements or equipment can be easily added managed through the wizards.

The data management structure

Advanced filtering and data cleansing, uses sophisticated Petex proprietary techniques

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Data Storage, Data Cleansing and Data Filtering

Data Management Instrumented fields have a huge volume of measurements coming from wells and equipment sensors often millions of data points from one field, per minute. Making the relevant measurement and data (validated measurements) available at the frequency required, necessitates sophisticated data storage, management, cleansing

and filtering of the data, suitable for the required tasks. A scalable, upgradable and extensible data technology has to be at the heart of effective long-term data management, hence productising of the data management through a single-asset data model is a fundamental.

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Notes

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Petroleum Experts

Head Ofce Petroleum Experts Ltd. Petex House 10 Logie Mill Edinburgh, EH7 4HG Scotland, UK Tel: +44 (0) 131 474 7030 Fax: +44 (0) 131 474 7031 e-mail: edinburgh@petex.com

Regional Ofces Petroleum Experts Inc. 757 N. Eldridge Pkwy. Suite 510 Houston, Texas, 77079 USA Tel: +1 281 531 1121 Fax: +1 281 531 0810 e-mail: houston@petex.com

Petroleum Experts Inc. 108 KOL Drive, Broussard, LA 70518 USA Tel: +1 337 839 1020 Fax: +1 337 839 1022 e-mail: lafayette@petex.com

2011 (R1)

Web: www.petroleumexperts.com