As the head of the process products portfolio at Uptake, I will provide some background on a use case that Oil & Gas EP companies may be interested in. I will discuss how those companies leverage Fusion to streamline and support their activities with data.

In the Oil & Gas industry, operating companies are looking to modernize completion and field production activities, such as monitoring fracking activities with well site data. The required data comes from internal operational technology systems and third-party suppliers.

THE CHALLENGE

The combination of this data provides complete visibility of what is happening at the intervening and neighboring wells that are often operated by other operating companies. Visibility is required due to the risk associated with unexpected changes in pressure or other relevant hydraulic fracturing responses.  These can lead to environmental, safety, and productivity impact.

During a fracking operation, data from the operating companies’ time-series historians and SCADA/PLC systems, such as well head controls, are required to understand how the wells are performing. Due to the fact that during fracking, drilling equipment is used, the onboard drilling systems and sensors (that collect things like depth of penetration, pressure, and flows as they frac) provide better visibility of what is happening in the well. In addition, a third-party surface pressure monitoring service supplier may be contracted to establish monitoring and sensing capabilities in the operators’ wells and neighboring wells from other operating companies. All this information needs to be recorded and become proof of due diligence to comply with regulatory requirements such as AER Directive 083 and Enform’s IRP 24.

The different types of data from the parties involved follow different formats and naming conventions and are accessible via different applications offered by each of the individual 3rd parties. For an operating company trying to monitor activities and keep the completion and field production teams informed of what is happening during and post a frack becomes a real challenge and a constraint to the business.

THE SOLUTION

An Industrial Analytics Data Hub that extracts data from multiple sites and corporate historians such as OSIsoft PI and Rockwell FactoryTalk. As often these systems are configured to capture a fraction of all the data from SCADA and control systems, connectivity & unconstrained data capture to these systems is a must. Some typical SCADA and control systems include Schneider Electric GeoSCADA (aka ClearSCADA), Ignition from Inductive Automation, and Rockwell Automation. Due to the fact that these are critical systems to operation and the environment, ensuring the security and performance of these systems are maintained. 

In terms of systems that support geographically dispersed assets, the data often is received as delayed batches from RTUs due to communication latency and bandwidth. The data in those delayed data sets may include unexpected and sudden changes in pressures. Delayed data often takes a direct path to archives and does not get published as snapshots. Thus, the solution cannot rely only on the most recent values, and we need to extract delayed data.

Drilling supply companies such as NOV and PASON offer data collection and analytics as a service to clients.  They deliver data to clients using a publish and subscribe approach via readily available cloud APIs. Surface pressure monitoring service suppliers such as ABRA offer also the ability to deliver offset monitoring data via cloud APIs. Thus, an Industrial Analytics Data Hub must be able to support the ingestion of the complex messages received from these organizations and merge with data collected from operators systems in parallel. 

Unless users have a good subject matter expert understanding of the wells and the operations, the data and messages received from these third-party providers can be difficult to understand. As a result, various analytics teams often cannot relate to the data as they do not follow industry or company-wide guidelines, such as WITSML and industry-standard well-naming conventions.

In order to correlate data from these various systems, an Industrial Analytics Data Hub must provide the ability to normalize and organize the data according to the needs of the fracking activities. The number of wells involved during a frack operation varies from job to job, so an Industrial Analytics Data Hub must be able to ingest data in a dynamic fashion and allow authorized users to extract all data that is relevant to their interests. Systems that do not use graphs to model data are often limited to reflecting these dynamics and will not help get the frack operating team easy access to the data they need.   

A one-fits-all solution is not ideal; most organizations are already leveraging existing tools such as PowerBI, ArcGIS, and/or existing services from their drilling providers. A rip and replace can be a risk involving lots of change management so it is imperative that an Industrial Analytics Data Hub is able to integrate and openly deliver the right data to those existing consumers. 

If you can relate to the above challenges, Uptake Fusion is a key enabling component of your overall solution of implementing an Industrial Analytics Data Hub. 

THE VALUE

In summary, companies looking to streamline operating activities and processes can experience measurable value with Fusion as follows:

• Instead of waiting days to discover what occurred, it allows operating companies to enhance collaboration and communication by providing early warnings of sudden, unexpected changes in pressure or other relevant hydraulic fracturing responses much faster to the teams involved. 

• It also improves data accessibility and analysis during frack and post-frack to determine root causes and potential actions from a single source of data rather than multiple dispersed applications.

• It offers a central repository to capture records from all parties involved for due diligence and regulatory compliance reporting purposes.

• It helps operating companies to capture knowledge in the form of monitoring rules, recommendations for benchmarking, and continuous improvement analysis and reporting.

• It enables operating companies to share data in a more collaborative manner with their drilling and monitoring service suppliers. 

• Lastly, it provides a foundation to manage your industrial data from your cloud and prepares you for growth into other monitoring areas, such as water, and asset performance monitoring, as the same data is often required by other teams and applications.