Digital Transformation In Oil and Gas
Cold Bore Technology’s SmartPAD is a digital completions technology that eliminates imprecise, manual tracking. Considered the world’s first universal completions operating system, SmartPAD has transformed fracking for producers in the Permian basin, the Bakken shale and in Western Canada, providing substantial increases in efficiencies, while providing a competitive advantage.
“We call it a centralized nervous system,” explains Cold Bore President Brett Chell. “The increased efficiencies are derived by connecting a bunch of different service companies’ automated equipment.” The SmartPAD system uses sensors installed on valves at the wellhead to measure pressure and valve position in six different locations. The automated data are captured in real time by the system’s Industrial Internet of Things sensor-driven software. The result is the consolidation of all service company data, including coil, wireline, frac, pump-down, water and sand on one screen.
SmartPAD solves one of the most daunting challenges operators face today: how to track their operational time series data. “Our software does state detection on the frac trees,” Chell explains. “It replaces that company employee’s notebook with one-second digital data for the whole pad. The record of what happened at the wellhead is available, in a one-second digital format.” The system attaches all service data, via time stamp to the operational log, and auto-populates WellView and OpenWells. “The result is a fully autonomous system, visible and accessible to all, with completely formatted and time-stamped data all in one place.”
A permission-based edge server, installed on location, allows the data to be shared with all service companies, as well as remotely to the operator’s office, anywhere in the world. Multiple frac locations can be monitored from a central location, with the potential to drastically reduce infrastructure requirements and spending.
Real time data capture advantage. The ability to capture the workflow in real time provides a better understanding of an operation’s critical path. Because the data is tracked to the second, the expected workplan can be compared to the actual workflow, reducing non-productive time (NPT), while enabling productivity efficiency gains (PEG) to be recorded
Once all the contextual service data are in one spot with workflow, Cold Bore’s frac analyzing tool comes into play. This software allows an operator to overlay any frac data set with another, and gain new insight. “Our software is driven by our clients,” Chell says. “It recognizes issues and suggests solutions. Eventually we will tie the software right into the equipment and allow it to make adjustments.” Use of the software also enables operators to move workers out of the most dangerous “hot zones,” greatly improving safety.
“SmartPAD gives an operator-centric perspective,” Chell continues. “It’s not as valuable to just see the coil data, for example. You want to know what it means in relation to the time series. What do all your raw values mean in relation to how long that took?” While the system optimizes field operations, it also optimizes office operations. The operational timestamp, i.e. the time series data pulled from the frac tree sensors, is non-biased and normalized, meaning that deliverables and missed targets, NPTs and PEGs are easily identified, and not subject to disagreement between the operator and service companies.