Transforming Water Injection Process With Real Time Automation

Abstract

Abstract For mature fields, water injection is one of the widely deployed techniques to ensure continuous oil recovery from the reservoir by maintaining the reservoir pressure, oil rim and pushing the oil from injection to production wells. Thus, it is critical to ensure a continuous and reliable operation of water injection to have consistent and sustainable rate. This paper demonstrates the new approach, utilizing automation and digital technology providing operational improvement and reduction in unplanned production deferment (UPD). One of the methods to effectively manage the water injection operation is via automation of injection process, especially since most of the water injection facilities still rely heavily on manual operation. First, a discussion on typical water injection technique is discussed. Challenges and sub-optimal operation of water injection processes within the company and industry are analysed. Then, the designing of a fully automated water injection system, such as equipment availability and constraints in matching and responding to well injection requirement are demonstrated. While an immediate adoption of process automation to mature assets may be faced with challenges such as system readiness, hardware availability, capital investment and mindset change, a step-by-step approach such as guided operation and semi-auto operation is explored as preparation prior to a full automation roll-out. With the shift from manual operation reliance to automation, the response time to process changes is improved leading to reduction in near-miss and trip cases, and minimum unplanned deferment.