Revamp Your Well Asset Surveillance

By Jeffery Anderson, Digital Architect and Ivan Alaniz, Solutions Architect, Sensia

For engineers who monitor hundreds of well assets, a day on the job is not without its pressures. These workers must contend with several screens of well data, hundreds of alarms, and multiple applications used to monitor and manage assets.

They’re also performing constant, complex problem solving to turn raw data into insights to understand what’s happening to assets in the field, and hopefully, get ahead of downtime events.

The primary culprit in all this? Asset surveillance systems. The systems make it difficult for engineers to know which wells are experiencing the most severe issues and, as a result, can easily miss critical events that can lead to asset failures.

Asset surveillance systems don’t need yet another application or layer of information. They need a complete overhaul. Modern equipment monitoring systems help do just that, putting the user experience front and center and using innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI). This can reduce the burdens put on engineers so they can focus on what’s most important: quickly addressing urgent asset issues and maximizing production.

Effects of Alarm Overload

Research conducted by Sensia shows more than 4,000 alarms can consume all an engineer’s time in one shift. This is simply because of the complicated nature of monitoring well assets.

For maximum protection, asset alarms often are set with tight threshold limits, and the evolving nature of oilfields activates them frequently. This leads to engineers constantly being pinged by alarms and continually having to adjust alarm settings based on changing well conditions.

In addition, several dozen or even hundreds of alarms can inundate engineers at any given time. With little-to-no context provided for much of this alarm data, engineers often aren’t aware which alarms are the most critical.

Because of this, engineers spend considerable time performing complex data analysis to understand exactly what’s happening in a well. This work can be time-consuming, and it can lead to mistakes because engineers often must manually copy and paste critical data between several different applications.

In a busy asset surveillance center, engineers may need to switch between these applications up to three or four times per minute. When jumping from one application to another, or even just one screen to another, an engineer could make a change at the wrong well because it has a similar name or condition as another well.

Added up, all these factors can make it difficult for companies to focus on optimizing production, reducing operational expenditures and maximizing equipment life.

It’s also important to consider how the current approach impacts the workforce. A deluge of alarms, difficulties in identifying and prioritizing critical events, and constant complex analysis work can stress and wear down engineers.

System Reboot

Traditional surveillance systems mirror the data-heavy SCADA systems used in the oil and gas industry. Over time, these systems have evolved to include more data and applications, making the already complex systems even more so.

Reimagined well-monitoring operations address the challenges of traditional systems and put the user experience first.

For example, modern systems address information overload problems by consolidating information from several screens onto just three screens. Rather than providing as much as information as possible, these screens deliver only what engineers need to know and the actions they need to take. They also eliminate application jumping and the need to copy and paste data between those applications.

What does a three-screen setup look like? A “triage” screen can provide a list of asset issues ranked by an AI-based triage score, helping engineers focus on the most urgent problems. A “well” screen can give engineers all the tools to address a well issue on one screen. And an “actions” screen lists the steps to address the issue.