Saudi Aramco, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia: Big Bore Offshore Gas Wells Production & Integrity Surveillance Digitalization

Total 457 words used.

Introduction

Northern Area Production Engineering Department (NAPED) of Saudi Aramco oversee the production of Northern Area Big Bore Gas Wells, which are one of a kind worldwide wells that require intensive monitoring; these wells are considered the most prolific wells in Saudi Aramco history in terms of production capacity, size, and operating pressures and temperatures. In addition, these Northern Area Big Bore wells are in operation in unmanned offshore platform facilities. Ensuring maximum production and highest possible integrity of these wells that operate in high pressure high temperature (HP/HT) environment poses a huge task. To meet this tremendous task, NAPED developed and deployed a strategic array of best-in-class cutting-edge tools and technologies for enhancing well integrity and equipment reliability capitalizing on Artificial Intelligence and fourth industrial revolution (IR 4.0) tools and technologies.

1^st IR 4.0 Tool (AI/IoT-based Wellhead Growth Monitoring):

Another opportunity where NAPED developed and piloted novel technology is the Wellhead Growth Remote Monitoring System. A wellhead growth is a process by which the physical structure of a gas well elongates due to high temperatures. Currently, WGHR is measured manually in quarterly basis. Thus, these measurements are not in real time. Therefore, NAPED has patented an advanced Wellhead growth monitoring technology (U.S. Patent Office, Patent No. 11,454,108) to address and provide consistent and real-time monitoring while operating a gas well. The patented technology significantly improved accuracy, provided real-time monitoring and enhanced well integrity surveillance and reliability.  

2^nd IR 4.0 Tool (AI-based Choke Health Detection):

NAPED also capitalized on the real-time data collected from all the producing gas wells sensors and are to develop AI models. One of the AI models aimed at detection of choke valve erosion. Chokes are an integral part of production systems and are crucial surface equipment that faces rough operating conditions. Prediction of choke healthy used to be a manual method whereby engineers review each well parameter individually. NAPED capitalized on AI to develop an AI approach that yielded 98% accuracy. The novel approach was selectively chosen to be presented as an AI success story during a technical presentation and publication (OTC-30981-MS) at Offshore Technology Conference held in Houston, Texas (2021).

3^rd IR 4.0 Tool (AI-based Production Rate Estimation):

NAPED further expanded the application of digital transformation tools to the estimation gas production rate. Accurate well production rate measurement is critical for reservoir management. The novel approach of NAPED capitalizes on Al analytics for estimating accurate gas flow rate values. This approach has improved the reservoir data management by providing accurate production rate values with an accuracy of an outstanding 99%. This incredible result was featured as a technical presentation and publication in EAGE 82^nd Conference and Exhibition held in Amsterdam (2021), paper number SPE-205163.