Saudi Arabia is planning to step up the use of the more advanced Intelligent Fields (I-Fields) in the development of its hydrocarbon sector after a successful I-Fields experience at its largest oilfield.

The state-owned Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil producing company, said it had created a team to undertake I-Fields operations as it is pushing ahead with major expansion projects to increase its sustainable oil output capacity and maintain the present capacity in the medium term.

According to Aramco's Science and Technology quarterly bulletin, the concept of I-Fields has continually been gaining increasing attention by virtually all oil field operators over the past few years. It said this development comes as a natural outcome of the increasing complexity of newly developed wells that provide better solutions to a rising reservoir and production engineering challenges. It noted that I-Fields are justified by their ability to provide solutions to minimise well intervention, optimise field performance and improve the decision-making and work efficiency.

"Saudi Aramco has recently implemented the I-Fields concept at Haradh-III, a newly developed field within the giant Ghawar field. In the planning stage, the simulation studies have shown the performance superiority of multilateral wells equipped with smart completion," the report said. "So the field was developed mainly with multilateral smart wells with permanent downhole monitoring systems and surface multiphase flow meters on each well. These systems were perfectly supplemented by a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (Scada) system making the field the first of its kind within Aramco with the ability to remotely monitor the real-time data and control both the surface and downhole valves."

Citing Saudi Aramco engineers, the bulletin said the experience had produced large benefits, adding that it proved the strength and reliability of I-Fields not only in the reservoir optimisation side, but also in the routine production engineering functions. "New challenges have been introduced by the I-Fields, mainly with finding the optimal way of manipulating the huge influx of data coming from each well. Validating the data becomes more involved trying to spot any communication failures. Also, analysing the data to identify trends required new procedures and software," the bulletin said.

"With the advent of the I-Fields concept, Saudi Aramco has established a company-wide team responsible for all I-Fields initiatives that include continuous evaluation and upgrades of the company's practices. Moreover, the team has introduced various monitoring and analysis software systems from third parties, which are mostly under trial testing."

The report said I-Fields had revolutionised the routine production engineering functions like well integrity and production allocations.

It has also created a new synergy and flow between various sectors in the company enabling real-time assessments of operations. "Also, the I-Fields enabled taking the advantage of wells' non-productive time for regular maintenance to conduct important surveys on these wells. The experience represents the transition between the visionary phase to the implementation phase of the I-Fields concept. It will help appreciate how the convergence of employed technologies is manifested in real field situations," it added.

According to the report, for the past decades, the notion of I-Fields has been rapidly developed and deployed virtually among oil field operators.

"Industry-wide, companies are starting to realise that the way forward to cope with the existing, as well as future, production challenges is though the implementation of promising technologies and better integration of the huge influx of data these technologies provide," it said.

The report said reservoir management usually sets the production strategies depending on many factors like the reservoir characteristics, pressure and original oil in place. These strategies are expected to maximise the recovery factor and, in turn, maximise profit.

"Intelligent Fields provide the best means to ensure compliance with the injection and production targets. Also, the huge influx of data enables thorough evaluation of reservoir management strategies to better address abnormal behaviours concerning areas of the reservoir."


Benefits of intelligent fields 

- Make available real-time data to concerned parties within any organisation. This feature improves the decision-making process by involving all required parties and providing sufficient data to conduct thorough analysis

- The ability to view the data on various sensors real-time enables detecting deteriorating performance of equipment which, if acted upon in a timely manner, will save the cost of production downtimes and avoid the extended loss of important data

- The capability to view data in a real-time fashion as well as remotely from end-users' stations enables timely detection of adverse well performance conditions to accelerate the decision-making process

- The time value of such decisions is critical, especially in advanced wells, such as multilateral wells equipped with smart completion, where great investments are made on the premise of sustained and optimal production

- I-Fields provide the ability to control wells remotely with virtually no additional manpower requirements or job scheduling delays. Therefore, I-Fields accelerate and improve the decision-making