Abstract

Well work-over activity to optimize the oil well production is a very cost intensive
activity. Before performing any well work over activity such as perforation, stimulation,
cementing, snubbing & swabbing, it is essential to evaluate the same in terms of return on
investment (ROI). Selection of best suited well work over activity depends upon various
oil well parameters such as rate gain estimates, reserve estimates and cost estimates. This
white paper talks about the solution which will address the missing functionalities in the
prevailing well work-over systems used for production optimization.
Work Overs for Production Optimization
VIEW POINT
Purpose of the document
Well work-over activity to optimize the
oil well production is a very cost intensive
activity. Before performing any well
work over activity such as perforation,
stimulation, cementing, snubbing &
swabbing, it is essential to evaluate the
same in terms of return on investment
(ROI). Returns can be in form of rate gain
estimates and reserve estimates and the
investment may be the actual cost involved
in performing well work over activity on
oil well.
Well services engineer faces great difficulty
while selecting the best suited well work
over activity. Selection of best suited
well work over activity depends upon
various oil well parameters such as rate
gain estimates, reserve estimates and cost
estimates.
Currently most of the oil & gas clients
make use of the human reasoning & past
experience to formulate the work-over
strategy to optimize the well productivity.
Some of the clients make use of the
data mining techniques to estimate the
possibility of success of their work-over
strategy, but these kinds of techniques
only perform the qualitative analysis based
on the similarity factors for the different
well parameters.
Therefore data mining techniques
are not considered to be very good
analysis techniques as they often lead
to under-estimation or over-estimation
of possibility of success due to absence
of the quantitative element. Adding
a quantitative element would mean
configuring some business rules to
define the criticality & importance of
well parameters from the work-over
perspective.
It is seen that most prevalent systems
for such kind of analysis are standalone
systems, which is only used by the primary
users having a direct access to that process.
These systems restrict the free flow of
information to other stakeholders, who
are more experienced & should be a part
of this process to make business critical
decisions. Absence of the collaborative
platform for information sharing leads to
rework on a particular well & decreased
cash flows. These systems also fail to
provide the integration points for 3rd party
applications and thus restrict data flow
from/to these applications.
Current systems used in the industry are
also missing out on a very important
functionality which is building of
knowledge repository as they fail to
capture the knowledge gained out of
the historical real live experience. This
knowledge base is very important from the
point of view of resolving future problems
as it acts as a major guiding factor for
the process stakeholders while making
business critical decisions.
This white paper talks about the
solution which will address the missing
functionalities in the prevailing well
work-over systems used for production
optimization.
Business Need
There are various challenges customers
face when the reservoir production starts
declining with time. Some of them are
listed below.
1. Identification of appropriate well
work-over technique to optimize
well productivity.
2. Achieving economies of scale while
performing work-overs.
3. Formulating strategy for the
selection of best suited work
practices to have the best possibility
of success (POS).
4. Estimation of possibility of success
(POS) and other parameters like
Pre-job rate gain estimates, reserve
estimates, cost estimates, which are
essential to evaluate the request
before commencing the work-over.
5. Availability of knowledge base
to identify & analyze potential
opportunities to improve the
performance of the well.
6. Collaborative platform for on-line
sharing of industry best practices,
guidelines, check sheets and lesson
learned.
7. Automated Post work Success
analysis and report generation.
8. Chances of underestimation or
overestimation of POS for a particular
work type.
9. In oilfield, field personnel normally
solve the problem by human
reasoning & miss out on the
important value, which data analytics
rules can add to it.
10. Managing & tracking all the phases
of well work request right from its
initiation till the execution to avoid
the rework that are done in wells at
different locations.
11. Quality of well work requests
submitted to well services department.
Description
Work-overs are activities aimed at
improving Oil and gas extraction by
leveraging the capabilities of equipments
employed. A typical well facility involves
enormous investments in the assets and
well work-overs involve huge capital
expenses which have the potential of
reducing operational cost significantly.
Right decision making regarding work
overs can result in considerable production
gain thus improving profitability.
The stakeholders need to
Identify the potential opportunities.
Analyze the work-over request
Calculate the Success rate for a work-
over request.
Refer to case histories for finding
solutions or evaluation of similar work-
overs done in past.
Store all the solutions in a database for
future reference
The proposed well work-over solution
is a decision support system enabled
with CBR (Case Based Reasoning) engine.
The work-over solution can be used by
the Petroleum Engineers to identify and
implement appropriate work-over on an
asset, whenever a possible potential to
enhance the performance of the asset is
identified by PE. This solution can be used
to create work-over request and to get
the post work-over reports for the existing
requests. Post work success analysis helps
the petroleum engineer to evaluate the
success or failure of the work-over done
on any asset by comparing the well
parameters before and after the work-over.
Some of the main functionalities exhibited
by this solution are:
Online Well work-over request process
with all pre-job estimates for Reserves,
Flow rates and Cost
Case-based Reasoning approach to
estimate success rate for the proposed
work
Work-over request ranking system to
identify potential and critical works
Strict monitoring on time, efforts and
resources
On-line sharing of industry best
practices, guidelines, check sheets and
lesson learned
Automated PWSA (Post work success
analysis) and report generation
This work-over solution can be an accurate
decision tool for the stakeholders such
as petroleum engineers to evaluate the
success rate for a decision regarding well
work-over. The system will timely request
processing and implementation by setting
time limit for various phases of well work-
over request. Post work success analysis is
incorporated for evaluation of success rate
of the completed work-over and is stored
as a case for future reference.
Petroleum Engineer (PE) can analyze the
current well performance and determine
well work-over opportunities. For issuing
a work-over request, PE can evaluate and
generate feasibility of various well work-
over requests and review best practices
guidelines & checklist. Petroleum Engineer
(PE) can generate a WWSR (Well work-
over service requests), authorized by
peer reviewer after relevant reviews. Well
Service Engineer (WSE) can take approved
WWSR for execution. Post Work Success
Analysis (PWSA) can be performed by the
Petroleum Engineers to identify if the work
that they executed on the wells were a
success or not.
The solution can help petroleum engineer
to identify potential opportunities to
improve the performance of the well by
estimating key success parameters such
as success rate (SR) and pre-job estimates,
which are essential to evaluate the request
before commencing the work-overs.
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Results/Conclusion
This solution will perform certain calculations based on the configurable business
rules defined in the business logic layer of the solution and these calculated well
performance parameters will help process stakeholders make business critical
decisions to optimize asset performance. Some of the critical well performance KPIs
generated by the solution can typically be
Barrels oil equivalent (BOE) rate gain due to intervention before actual work-over
Incremental estimated ultimate recovery (EUR)- Gas/Oil before actual work-over
Incremental estimated ultimate recovery (EUR)- Barrels oil equivalent (BOE) before
actual work-over
Cash flows due to incremental reserves
Ranking before actual work-over
Barrels oil equivalent (BOE) rate
Possibility of success (POS)- Recommended by solution
REFERENCES
www.stottlerhenke.com/ai_general/
glossary.htmCached - Similar- Stottler
Henke
Bogaerts, S., and Leake, D. 2005. A
Framework for Rapid and Modular
Case-Based Reasoning System
Development. Technical Report TR
617, Computer Science Department,
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.
Bogaerts, S., and Leake, D. 2006. What
Evaluation Criteria Are Right for CCBR?
Considering Rank Quality. In T. R.
Roth-Berghofer et al., eds., LNAI 4106,
Proceedings of the Eighth European
Conference On Case-Based Reasoning,
pp 385-389, Berlin Heidelberg.
Springer-Verlag.
Stakeholders
Petroleum Engineer (PE)- Responsible for
creating the WWR and monitoring the
progress and status of the outstanding
WWRs
Best Practice Lead (BP Lead)- Responsible
for assigning the Peer Reviewer for the
WWR
Peer Reviewer (PR)- Responsible for
reviewing and signing-off WWRs
submitted by the Petroleum Engineers
Well Service Engineer (WSE)-
Responsible to carry out a work on
assigned WWR
Value Proposition for E&P
Companies
1. E&P companies are facing the
challenge of losing the knowledge
and skills when a key employee leaves
By having CBR based model and by
storing the valuable experiences in
structured way, E&P companies can
overcome the barriers.
2. Through this solution customers
will come to know about the
incremental cash flows i.e. actual
return on investment generated out
of incremental oil/gas reserves in
a simulated environment without
investing anything before actual
work-over implementation, which will
be a recurring saving for customer for
each work-over against one time total
investment.
3. This solution will help customers save
millions of dollars by suggesting the
appropriate work-overs & avoiding the
rework on a particular well.
4. This solution will allow business users
involved in this process to spend more
time in productive jobs by saving lot
of their time spent earlier in routine
activities due to complete work-over
process automation.
5. This solution makes use of the case
based reasoning (CBR) modeling
technique in addition to the human
reasoning & past experience & thus
reduces the chances of deviation of
success (POS) for a particular work-
over on a particular well.
6. Through its collaborative platform
this solution will enable free flow of
information to all the business users
to help them make business critical
decisions.
7. This will be a highly customizable
solution which will also provide easy
integration with other 3rd party
applications to enable information
flow from/to applications.
8. This solution would also help in
building knowledge base by storing
solved problem cases back into the
case historian, which can be used as
a reference while solving the future
problems.
9. Selection of optimum solution
through comparative analysis with
similar problem cases in the past and
considering relevant parameters like
past success rate.
10. Online reporting & knowledge sharing.
11. Eliminates redundant data sets.