The OVS* Optimization matters conference (OMC15), held in Austin Texas earlier this year, heard from a who’s-who of US and international opcos. Mark Crawford and Brandon Sokol discussed the role that OVS plays in Exxon-Mobil’s ‘EM2010’ technology integration, in particular with its worldwide production surveillance and optimization effort. Exxon contracted with OVS to build a toolset to manage and store production forecasts in a database. At the same time a legacy surveillance tool was replaced with an OVS-based solution co-developed by OVS and ExxonMobil engineers. Use cases include well test validation, PI tag management, volume reporting and downtime tracking. The talk ended with a list of current enhancement requests. These include better documentation, improved speed and Excel-style macro recording and pivot table functionality.
Optimization of mature fields was a common theme at OMC2015 and they don’t get much more mature than Zone Energy’s leases on the East Texas super giant, discovered in 1930. Robert Archer described how data from Zone’s water flood was initially handled in Excel. As work progressed, an OVS-supplied system was deployed along with a database with wizards for allocation and performance analysis. The system is linked to third party data stores and provides a drilling and well schematic repository, lease and well allocation workflows and more. Zone reported a ‘very affordable and quick implementation’ that has seen take-up across the company.
Ahmed Swedan (Wintershall Libya) has likewise replaced ‘complex nested’ Excel spreadsheets with an OVS-based workflow. This has automated surveillance and provides well test validation, gas lift optimization and enhanced back allocation. The system has been in operation for two years and has improved data configuration and quality and has enhanced inter-departmental collaboration. The system has helped engineering and asset management teams ‘realize the industry-wide push toward integrated operations with a single solution providing data integration, visualization, surveillance, and workflow automation.’
Mike Osborne showed how OVS has helped Pacific Coast Energy ‘change the culture’ of its operations on its super mature (discovered in 1901!) Orcutt diatomite cyclic steam flood operations. OVS has been used since 2011 to simplify digital choke management, smooth out steam generation, and optimize well injection decisions. More from OMC2015 in our next issue.
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