Publications

DX Field is a thermal enhance oil recovery type field currently having over 6000 Beam wells or wells with Sucker Rod Pump (SRP) as its Artificial Lift method, with data monitored online using conventional near-real time Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. With regards to continuous improvement, in the era of Industrial Internet of Things applications, the implementation of new technology needs to be matured with actual use in field operations. Edge computing is a technical term related to devices that push processing to the edge of the network, close to the location where data is created and collected. The devices collect large volumes of data and incorporate greater processing power themselves rather than burdening the network bandwidth by transferring large volumes of raw data back for analysis, as these small footprint computing devices process the data at the edge, sending back only results or alerts. This approach will reduce data gravity, that is, it will be faster and less costly to backhaul data to a server or data center. Most of the existing Beam wells in DX Field have implemented the intermittent idle system of SRP; this system is called Pump Off Control (POC). The data gathered from SCADA currently evaluated by user and used to perform POC setting changes to gain maximum production. With the objective to further enhancement of the process, Edge device was introduced. The selected use is to empower high frequency data gathering from Edge devices to the existing controller and perform optimization of POC autonomous control. The device provides autonomous control of the pump-off system by changing its idle time setting based on surface/downhole pump and well production condition. This can be achieved by dense data retrieval locally on the edge device located at the well site. Additional system that needs to be attached to new Edge device is GSM modem for transmitting high frequency data to server. Data transfer between Edge device to server employs Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol, a communication protocol which uses a publish/subscribe method. The data that has been transferred then can be observed by the user through a new cutting-edge web app. With availability of high frequency data to capture real time well condition, there is opportunity to new and valid discovered data pattern. Use case of Edge device POC autonomous control resulted in increase of POC efficiency (production optimization) by an average of 24%. DX Field up to this day still has many challenges that can be optimized with the help of Edge Computing capability. Upon the success of such implementation, further utilization of Edge Computing device is very promising not only limited for Beam Well reliability and optimization but also can be used for other type of artificial lift and other data collection type cases in the Upstream Oil & Gas surface facilities.