An OSGi-based production process monitoring system for SMEs

The present paper proposes an architecture for a product process monitoring system suitable for SMEs (Small-Medium Enterprises). The monitoring system is the main means by which decision-making systems based on intelligent automation technologies are aware of the state of the system on which they will take decisions. Methods and tools from best-practice and best-effort approaches are proposed in the context of SMEs, where the requirements of low cost, low initial level of digitisation and high production flexibility often coexist and contribute to the complexity of management and control problems in these companies. The paper focuses on the design of the monitoring system using an OSGi framework to meet industry standards and Industry 4.0 requirements, taking into account the peculiarities of SMEs as design constraints. The proposed architecture was first tested using a simulation tool and then implemented on a full-scale production line used for data collection

Applications of Underbalanced Fishbone Drilling for Improved Recovery and Reduced Carbon Footprint in Unconventional Plays

Fishbone Drilling (FbD) consists of drilling several micro-holes in different directions from the main vertical or deviated wellbore. Similar to multilateral micro-hole drilling, FbD may be used to enhance hydrocarbon production in naturally fractured formations or in refracturing operations by interconnecting the existing natural fractures. When combined with underbalanced drilling using a coiled tubing rig, FbD enhances the production further by easing the natural flow of the hydrocarbon from the reservoir to the wellbore. The design aspects of the Fishbones include determining the number, length, distance between the branches, and the angle of sidetracking of the branches from the main borehole. In addition, the design of efficient drill string components to suit the FbD conditions are another important design aspect in FbD technology development. Examples of this include a high-performance small, diameter downhole motor and the use of High Voltage Pulsed Discharge (HVPD) plasma shock waves at different pulse frequencies and wave pressures to impose shear forces on the formation to break it more easily. This paper will present a comprehensive review of the FbD technology, including some of its current applications and design aspects. The possibility of using FbD in conjunction with hydraulic fracturing to boost production by creating a network of connected fractures will be discussed, and some of its technical and economic benefits and challenges will be compared

Reducing Produced Water Disposal Via Effective Treatments Methods And Re-Use: Proposed Sustainable Application For Bakken, North Dakota

It is true that the advancements in both the hydraulic frack and directional drilling technologies led to less time and a bit easier ways to develop unconventional oil and gas assets worldwide. In the Bakken North Dakota, the result of these breakthroughs and advancements in technologies are that they drastically reduce the time it takes to drill and complete a well leading to more wells (347 in 2004 to 16,300 in 2020). In 2019, the United States became the largest global crude oil producer, and the unconventional Bakken Play in North Dakota is one of the major contributors to this feat. As more wells are being drilled, more waste water are being produced. Analysis also showed early increases in water cuts even in younger (less than 3 years) wells drilled around McKenzie and Williams Counties. The concern here is that the wastewater produced by these increased oilfield activities is highly saline (~170,000 to 350,000 ppm TDS), and the most commonly used water disposal method in the Bakken Formation is deep injection into disposal wells. Notwithstanding, there are growing environmental and operational concerns about the sustainability and impacts of this approach. However, if the wastewater is efficiently treated, it could be reused in hydraulic fracturing operations or to support coal mining and irrigation activities. This research uses various method to investigate the root cause of the high volume of wastewater production in the Bakken, North Dakota and how these flow back and produced water could be treated using various novel technologies like, the advanced and improved desalination, advanced electro-oxidation and dilution methods. Lastly, the research was able to provide robust and detailed results on how the Bakken treated produced water could be transformed to good use especially as base fluids for hydraulic frack fluid formulation

A comprehensive approach to the design of advanced well completions

Advanced Well Completions (AWCs) employing Downhole Flow Control (DFC) technology such as Inflow Control Devices (ICDs), Interval Control Valves (ICVs),Autonomous Inflow Control Devices (AICDs) and/or Annular Flow Isolations (AFIs) provide a practical solution to the challenges normally encountered by conventional wells. Both oilfield operating companies and several researchers have developed workflows to identify the optimum well location and field development well configuration. However, all these approaches do not at present consider optimising advanced well completions employing DFCs. The objective of this thesis is to provide an automated, comprehensive workflow to identify the optimum advanced well completion design that ensures an optimum well performance throughout the well’s and field’s life. This study starts by describing the history of ICD, AICD, ICV and AFI development with emphasis on the (near and) fully commercially available types and their areas of application. The thesis then reviews the flow performance of available ICD, ICV and AICD types. It reviews the available advanced completion modelling techniques and their historical development. This allows provision of guidelines on how to model DFC technologies performance when combined with AFIs over the well’s life. It shows how the value of such well-construction options can be quantified using these tools. The thesis introduces a novel workflow outlining the process of designing ICD completions with or without AFIs for different well architectures applied in different reservoir types for production or injection purposes. The workflow incorporates: the ICD restriction sizing; the requirement for AFI, their frequency and distribution; the impact of ICD reliability throughout the life of the well, the effect of uncertainty on the design parameters, installation risks and the resulting economic value. This workflow is then extended to the design and evaluation of AICD completions, through identification of the optimum control of water and excess gas production. The value and applicability of the proposed workflow is verified using synthetic and real field case studies. The latter include three oil fields (H-Field, S-Field and U-Field), one thin oil column/gas condensate field (NH-Field) and a gas field (C-Field). These cases also illustrated the value which can be gained from the application of Downhole Flow Control technologies

Advances in Methane Production from Coal, Shale and Other Tight Rocks

This collection reports on the state of the art in fundamental discipline application in hydrocarbon production and associated challenges in geoengineering activities. Zheng et al. (2022) report an NMR-based method for multiphase methane characterization in coals. Wang et al. (2022) studied the genesis of bedding fractures in Ordovician to Silurian marine shale in the Sichuan basin. Kang et al. (2022) proposed research focusing on the prediction of shale gas production from horizontal wells. Liang et al. (2022) studied the pore structure of marine shale by adsorption method in terms of molecular interaction. Zhang et al. (2022) focus on the coal measures sandstones in the Xishanyao Formation, southern Junggar Basin, and the sandstone diagenetic characteristics are fully revealed. Yao et al. (2022) report the source-to-sink system in the Ledong submarine channel and the Dongfang submarine fan in the Yinggehai Basin, South China Sea. There are four papers focusing on the technologies associated with hydrocarbon productions. Wang et al. (2022) reported the analysis of pre-stack inversion in a carbonate karst reservoir. Chen et al. (2022) conducted an inversion study on the parameters of cascade coexisting gas-bearing reservoirs in coal measures in Huainan. To ensure the safety CCS, Zhang et al (2022) report their analysis of available conditions for InSAR surface deformation monitoring. Additionally, to ensure production safety in coal mines, Zhang et al. (2022) report the properties and application of gel materials for coal gangue control

Numerical study of underground CO2 storage and the utilization in depleted gas reservoirs

The emission of atmospheric CO2 is the main contributor to global warming and climate change. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is considered as the most promising technology for slowing down the atmospheric CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, CCS is beneficial for the circulation carbon economy. However, CCS has not been implemented on large scale because of the related risks and the lack of economic incentives. This thesis attempts to focus on these two problems and provide some strategies to address them. Regarding the risks associated with CCS, a parametric uncertainty analysis for CO2 storage was conducted and the general role of different geomechanical and hydrogeological parameters in response to CO2 injection was determined. Regarding the financial incentives of CCS operation, this thesis attempts to increase the cost-effectiveness of CCS through co-injecting CO2 with impurities associated with enhanced gas recovery (CSEGR) and using CO2 as cushion gas in the underground gas storage reservoir (UGSR). In order to understand the thermal-hydrological-mechanical (THM) process of CO2 storage, the THM coupled simulator TOUGH2MP (TMVOC)-FLAC3D was developed. By using the developed TOUGH2MP (TMVOC)-FLAC3D simulator, numerical simulation for hundreds of sampled data was performed for results generated by the Quasi-Monte Carlo method. Based on the simulation results, the general role of different geomechanical and hydrogeological parameters was determined in response to CO2 injection using distance correlation. In addition, a risk factor was defined to characterize the risks of the caprock due to CO2 injection. The results showed that the reservoir permeability and the injection rate are the two most important factors in determining the pressure change. Moreover, the reservoir Young’s modulus plays the most vital role in formation deformation including vertical displacement. The pressure change exhibits a much closer correlation with the risk factor in comparison to the formation deformation, indicating the importance of pressure change in the integrity assessment of the caprock. By using the machine learning approach in support vector regression (SVR), the SVR surrogate model was well-trained based on the data regarding simulated results, and its reliability was verified using the test data. Thereafter, the formation response including the pressure change as well as formation deformation, can be predicted using the trained SVR surrogate model within a very short time. The methods and working scheme applied in this work can be used to guide time and effort spent mitigating the uncertainty in these parameters to acquire trustworthy model forecasts and risk assessments in CCS projects. Attempting to decrease the cost of CCS operation, CO2 injection with impurity gas, i.e., N2 and O2, into a depleted gas reservoir was investigated. The impacts of the key parameters on the performance of CO2 storage and CSEGR were analyzed in detail. The results showed that the effect of impurities on CO2 storage capacity is dependent on the reservoir pressure and temperature conditions, and the concentration of impurities. The depleted gas reservoir with a relatively low temperature and low irreducible water saturation is favorable to the CO2 storage capacity. A low primary gas recovery for the depleted gas reservoir is in favor of CSEGR, while it is suitable for dedicated CO2 storage when the primary gas recovery is high. In addition, it is suggested to produce the CH4 as possible before the operation of CO2 storage and CSEGR. The chromatographic partitioning phenomenon may occur when N2 and O2 were co-injected with CO2 into depleted gas reservoirs, which could be used as a monitoring strategy for the CO2 front and potential CO2 leakage. In addition to the solubility and concentration of the impurity gas would affect this phenomenon, there is a critical water saturation for the occurrence of significant chromatographic partitioning phenomenon associated with determined type and concentration of impurity gas. To increase the cost-effectiveness of CCS, the suitability of utilizing CO2 as the cushion gas in the UGSR was analyzed based on the geological parameters of Donghae depleted gas reservoir in Korea. The cyclic CH4 production and injection were conducted over a period of 15 years to acquire the mixing behavior of CO2 and CH4 in a relatively long-term period. The results showed that the maximum CO2 concentration that can be used for cushion gas is 9% under the condition of production and injection for 120 and 180 days in a production cycle at a rate of 4.05 and 2.7 kg/s, respectively. The typical curve of the mixing zone thickness can be divided into four stages, i.e., the increasing stage, smooth stage, suddenly increasing stage, and periodic change stage. The CO2 fraction in the UGSR, reservoir permeability, and production rate have a significant effect on the breakthrough of CO2 in the production well, while the effect of water saturation and temperature is neglectable. For the purpose of utilizing more CO2 as cushion gas in the UGSR, CO2 is supposed to be injected for supplementation during the operation of UGSR. Generally, the parametric uncertainty analysis conducted in this thesis is beneficial for the risk assessments in CCS projects. Co-injecting CO2 with impurities associated with CSEGR and utilizing CO2 as cushion gas in UGSR are favorable for improving the economic incentives of CCS operation. Therefore, this thesis is beneficial for promoting the application of CCS and mitigating the atmospheric CO2 emissions

Population-based algorithms for improved history matching and uncertainty quantification of Petroleum reservoirs

In modern field management practices, there are two important steps that shed light on a multimillion dollar investment. The first step is history matching where the simulation model is calibrated to reproduce the historical observations from the field. In this inverse problem, different geological and petrophysical properties may provide equally good history matches. Such diverse models are likely to show different production behaviors in future. This ties the history matching with the second step, uncertainty quantification of predictions. Multiple history matched models are essential for a realistic uncertainty estimate of the future field behavior. These two steps facilitate decision making and have a direct impact on technical and financial performance of oil and gas companies. Population-based optimization algorithms have been recently enjoyed growing popularity for solving engineering problems. Population-based systems work with a group of individuals that cooperate and communicate to accomplish a task that is normally beyond the capabilities of each individual. These individuals are deployed with the aim to solve the problem with maximum efficiency. This thesis introduces the application of two novel population-based algorithms for history matching and uncertainty quantification of petroleum reservoir models. Ant colony optimization and differential evolution algorithms are used to search the space of parameters to find multiple history matched models and, using a Bayesian framework, the posterior probability of the models are evaluated for prediction of reservoir performance. It is demonstrated that by bringing latest developments in computer science such as ant colony, differential evolution and multiobjective optimization, we can improve the history matching and uncertainty quantification frameworks. This thesis provides insights into performance of these algorithms in history matching and prediction and develops an understanding of their tuning parameters. The research also brings a comparative study of these methods with a benchmark technique called Neighbourhood Algorithms. This comparison reveals the superiority of the proposed methodologies in various areas such as computational efficiency and match quality

Tracing back the source of contamination

From the time a contaminant is detected in an observation well, the question of where and when the contaminant was introduced in the aquifer needs an answer. Many techniques have been proposed to answer this question, but virtually all of them assume that the aquifer and its dynamics are perfectly known. This work discusses a new approach for the simultaneous identification of the contaminant source location and the spatial variability of hydraulic conductivity in an aquifer which has been validated on synthetic and laboratory experiments and which is in the process of being validated on a real aquifer

Spillovers of underground gas storage facilities and their role in the sustainable energy markets:assessment and policy recommendations

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the construction and operation of underground gas storage (UGS) facilities, under the prism of the recent rise in energy prices. The focus is on developing energy markets interconnected with gas producers through pipelines and has access to liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities in parallel. Design/methodology/approach: Through a focal market in Europe, the authors estimate the economic value for both stakeholders and consumers by introducing a methodology, appropriately adjusted to the specificities of the domestic energy market. The Transmission System Operator, the Energy Market Regulator, the Energy Exchange and Eurostat are the main data sources for our calculations and conclusions. Findings: The authors investigate the perspectives of UGS facilities, identifying financial challenges considering specific energy market conditions which are barriers to new storage facilities. Nevertheless, the energy price rocketing coupled with the security of gas supply issues, which arose in autumn 2021 and were continuing in 2022 due to the Russia–Ukraine crisis, highlight that gas storage remains, at least for the midterm, at the core of European priorities. Originality/value: The paper emphasizes on developing markets toward green transition, proposing tangible policy recommendations regarding gas storage. A new methodological approach is proposed, appropriate to quantify the economic value of UGSs in such markets. Last, a mix of energy policy options is suggested which include regulatory reforms, support schemes and new energy infrastructures that could make the gas storage investments economically viable

Assessment Of Disruption Risk In Supply Chain The Case Of Nigeria’s Oil Industry

evaluate disruption risks in the supply chain of petroleum production. This methodology is developed to formalise and facilitate the systematic integration and implementation of various models; such as analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) and various statistical tests. The methodology is validated with the case of Nigeria’s oil industry. The study revealed the need to provide a responsive approach to managing the influence of geopolitical risk factors affecting supply chain in the petroleum production industry. However, the exploration and production risk, and geopolitical risk were identified as concomitant risk factors that impact performance in Nigeria’s oil industry. The research findings show that behavioural-based mechanisms successfully predict the ability of the petroleum industry to manage supply chain risks. The significant implication for this study is that the current theoretical debate on the supply chain risk management creates the understanding of agency theory as a governing mechanism for supply chain risk in the Nigerian oil industry. The systematic approach results provide an insight and objective information for decisions-making in resolving disruption risk to the petroleum supply chain in Nigeria. Furthermore, this study highlights to stakeholders on how to develop supply chain risk management strategies for mitigating and building resilience in the supply chain in the Nigerian oil industry. The developed systematic method is associated with supply chain risk management and performance measure. The approach facilitates an effective way for the stakeholders to plan according to their risk mitigation strategies. This will consistently help the stakeholders to evaluate supply chain risk and respond to disruptions in supply chain. This capability will allow for efficient management of supply chain and provide the organization with quicker response to customer needs, continuity of supply, lower costs of operations and improve return on investment in the Nigeria oil industry. Therefore, the methodology applied provide a new way for implementing good practice for managing disruption risk in supply chain. Further, the systematic approach provides a simplistic modelling process for disruption risk evaluation for researchers and oil industry professionals. This approach would develop a holistic procedure for monitoring and controlling disruption risk in supply chains practices in Nigeria