An oil well generates about 1 terabyte (TB) of production data per day. Each productive well generates the equivalent of the full-text data of Wikipedia every week, suggests an IDC 2013 Research Infographic. Exploration and production (E&P) companies are often at a loss for how to deal with such an unstoppable flood of data.
An E&P owner-operator continuously strives to increase the value of each asset by controlling costs, improving efficiency, and increasing production. As part of its extraction techniques they frequently use “choke modeling.” Choke modeling is the complex system that extracts production assets (and non-assets) out of the ground and regulates the flow and composition of the extraction product based on requirements, profitability, and other criteria.
Big Data could cause big headaches
Managing and making sense of Big Data is a very complex task for exploration companies. Unique difficulties like the Big Data challenge of an oil and gas supermajors combined with the investment-analysis challenge of a large investment firm equal sort of a perfect storm!
Such complexity should invite significant attention from the companies struggling with it. However, according to a June 2013 ARC Advisory Group client report, industry data indicates that automation investments represent less than 3% to 4% of total E&P spend.¹ In fact, ARC Advisory Group believes that increased investment would yield much greater return in the form of increased rate of penetration, increased production, and improved ultimate recovery. The increasing investments in the digital oilfield expected in the coming years represent an excellent opportunity for suppliers of automation tools and other technology, according to the report.
At present, exploration companies typically don’t have the manpower or processing capability to collect the huge volumes of data generated, or to perform analyses on it. In addition, combining financial and sensor data to be meaningful and useful to end users significantly increases the complexity and requirements of analytics.
But several companies are choosing to meet the challenge head on. Rather than waiting each month and reacting to a monthly report, these companies are looking to get daily visibility into its production operations and take quick, decisive actions based on capacity and profitability.
Harnessing the power of the flood of data using advanced analytics
In order to keep up with the stream of data being generated by field sensors and financial data systems, companies today can utilize a full suite of in-memory and analytics tools. They can identify trends and patterns and predict impending problems that could be anticipated and prevented before they fully materialized.
As a result, companies are able to view up-to-date information on asset performance together with production, land, and planning data in order to more closely manage profit and loss on a day-to-day basis. They can even measure production performance against financials to analyze profitability on a daily basis, with the ability to drill down to each individual asset and anticipate preventing issues.
A daily analysis of production shortages and market price changes now helps to maximize production at the right time and in the right manner to increase revenue. Similarly, a production analysis of the new enterprise data warehouse allows users to identify and quickly address inefficiencies and high-cost areas. Under the traditional monthly reporting system, each month-end analysis would reveal issues such as overproduction or a suboptimal mix of chemicals. These issues can now be corrected on a day-to-day basis, significantly boosting cost savings.
Big returns from Big Data analytics
Are you looking to improve efficiency across the board—with buying, selling, and investment portfolio decisions, and daily choke-modeling adjustments? Are you looking to get real-time information on production shortages or market changes to help maximize production and reduce downtime?
June 2013 ARC Advisory Group client report, ”Automation Helps Optimize Enhanced Oil Recovery for Mature Fields”