Good Actionable Data

The whole point to capturing Production and/or Injection Loss data is to create good quality information that your people trust and that they will use to support good decision making. This, if you like, is the “Mission Statement” for loss reporting. There are often various forces at work, conspiring against this aspiration, such as the temptation to set targets on the low side in order to make production efficiency appear better than it really is. Another is related to the level of detail captured…

 

Analysis of a Typical Loss Event

We recently added some new functionality to our Choke Model software at the request of one of the North Sea’s biggest producers, which allows them to break down a loss event into one or more different parts, including things like:

  1. Slowdown
  2. Shutdown/Cascade Shutdown
  3. Start-up Delay
  4. Ramp-up Delay

 

They were aware that some production was being lost due to Start-up and Ramp-up delays, but felt they were inconsistent when capturing this detail as often these issues would simply be attributed to the original trip. The new functionality we added, made it much easier to isolate these causes of loss.

 

Surprising Results

Over the course of a year, they discovered that nearly one quarter of total lost production was due to Start-up and Ramp-up delays rather than the problem that caused the initial slowdown or shutdown:

This caused quite a stir and a realisation that there was a large obtainable “prize” to be won, hopefully without the need for major new investment. On further investigation, they discovered that there were differences between shifts when it came to bringing production back on line and back to full capacity. This again pointed more to training & procedural issues rather than a requirement for large scale investment.

This operator was kind enough to share these findings at our recent Choke Model users’ workshop and needless to say, all of the operators present, were keen to upgrade to the latest version in order to take advantage of this new functionality. Part of the reason why it has taken me so long to get back to writing these articles!

For more information or if you have any questions or queries, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Neil Hardy

+44 (0)7767 890636

neil.hardy@younglight.com