Oil industry is losing out on billions due to underutilised in-well fibre optic technology

Published:  07 October, 2020

Production benefits of hundreds of millions of dollars per asset can be realised through the use of in-well fibre optic technology when the vast amounts of data produced are managed and translated rapidly into actionable insights. This is according to a new white paper from LYTT, a leading provider of specialist data analytics designed and proven to increase the performance of industrial assets.

While the oil and gas industry started to install fibre optic cables in hydrocarbon wells three decades ago, these networks are substantially underused despite their potential to lead to significant production improvements with the emergence of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS).

Companies are wary of DAS technology because of the vast amount of data it produces, and the capacity and skillset required to turn this data into something that can immediately add value to operations. As a result, operators have become accustomed to making multi-million-dollar operational decisions based on data collected intermittently and that only offers a snapshot of well performance.

LYTT offers a cutting-edge solution to address the issues of data volume and insight extraction. By leveraging fibre optic cables working as downhole sensors, insights are generated that solve fundamental challenges to production in hydrocarbon wells such as inflow phase and flow profiling; outflow profiling; sand identification; and well integrity analysis. Using hybrid analytics, this data can provide a real-time view of changes in production, enabling operators to act upon the downhole insights dynamically.

As the oil and gas industry continues to face substantial challenges in the form of fluctuating oil prices driven by economic shocks and geopolitical battles and increasing pressure on governments and corporates to cut their environmental impact, optimising profitability and efficiency will be vital throughout 2020 and beyond.

In its new whitepaper ‘Raising Recovery Rates in Real-Time” LYTT demonstrates how its innovative hybrid analytics enable oil and gas firms to profit from underused fibre optic networks and boost efficiency and well-production in real-time.

The whitepaper, available to download here, highlights three challenges producers face when dealing with legacy or remediated assets: sand detection, well integrity and flow profiling and explains how hybrid analytics can help owners and operators tackle these issues.

Prad Thiruvenkatanathan, co-founder and chief product & technology officer, LYTT said, “Oil and gas companies have a huge data opportunity. On one hand, they can continue as they have been, basing multi-million-dollar production decisions on little to no information or make the choice to invest in the real-time insights they need.”

“LYTT was founded on solving problems that the marketplace faces. In this time of uncertainty, the industry needs to work collaboratively and empower operators to proactively manage risks with proven technologies. We have already seen results of several hundred million dollars across a group of assets by adding production, managing integrity and increasing field recovery.”

Prad continued, “There is no question that oil and gas will remain an important part of the global economy for many years to come. But companies need to ensure their operations are as sustainable as possible by maximising the production from existing wells and reducing the need for further drilling or infrastructure.”

LYTT is a rapidly growing tech start-up creating ground-breaking technology to tackle complex energy challenges in extreme environments. LYTT is backed by bp, which has a successful track record of deploying the technology over 100 times worldwide.