When developing a shale layer or a coal-bed methane seam, an operator is mapping the formation with multiple pads, multiple wells and multiple horizontal runs. It is a very repetitive process -- drill, frac, produce; drill, frac, produce; drill, frac, produce.

“It’s more like a factory than the old, conventional process. It is a lean manufacturing model,” said John Gilmore Jr., director, upstream oil and gas, global industry solutions, Invensys Operations Management.

“You’ve got new wells added every day, but the character, sometimes the equipment and the operating mode of these wells will change very quickly as well. The concept that is being put forward is the ‘gas factory,’” he told Hart Energy E&P Online. “We are like a factory that is producing wells daily and then using those wells to produce natural gas.”

As Gilmore pointed out, there is a big spike in production from shale gas wells, followed by a rapid drop off and then an extremely long production life. These fields provide lower cash flow but a longer recovery time.

“You need a continuous peak. You need lots of wells to make these things work. Numbers approaching 5,000 wells or more are not unusual. You have to drill fresh wells at a high rate to keep production up and until the tails of the decline curves start to accumulate to the point you can keep your investment going,” he noted.

“I’ve been working with Arrow in Australia with coal-bed methane wells. Their plan is to add one completed well per day. They have multiple crews. It takes about one week to frac and complete. Every day there is going to be a new well coming on. That’s thousands of wells literally. These wells are continuously changing. They are building wells every day,” he emphasized.

Given the sheer volume of wells coming onstream, what does the gas factory concept do to automation? How does it change the way we automate these fields? “That’s the business that Invensys is in,” he said with a laugh. “We don’t deliver a new automation system to you each day. It has to be a system that grows every day with you. It must be highly flexible and highly adaptable.”

Because of the well life-cycle, the automation mode has to be able to deal with change. For example, “that first spike out of a shale-gas well may be enough to strip water. But as that tails off in a year or so, you’re going to have to come in with some kind of water pumping. That’s going to be added to the operations load. Then later, you may not have enough pressure to get gas into the pipeline, so you add a compressor. And, all of this depends on the economics,” Gilmore said.

“You need span of control. You want to have a great span of control, but you have large well counts and still need to hold down the costs. Lean manufacturing, by its concept, relies on comprehensive reporting. You must know where your problems are to avoid them or at least respond to them quickly. Our model is to go after this with what we call a self-configuring -- as much as possible -- automation system,” he explained.

“It is a system that once it is designed and structured, it can be reconfigured as these new wells are added. The new changes in the operating mode of the wells are basically defined by the operating personnel as part of running the facility,” he continued. “This is what we call our ‘well field application.’ It has multi-trends capability and you can add these trends by yourself.”

Gilmore noted that the well field application is in service now in North America in around 15,000 wells.

“If you’re going to have span of control, the operator has to be able to see what is happening at that well right now,” he emphasized. “We provide a graphic view of each unit. But, that goes against the problem of low cost and low support. We think we’ve solved that problem with the system being self-configuring.”

To be self-configuring, the operator would need to enter a few key words, define the type of RTU being used and designate the communication link.

“You literally check what equipment is located at that well. If you need to add a piston pump, for example, to unload water, all you need to do is check a box in the system. If you’re authorized, push a button, and 15 to 20 minutes later the change can be seen on the screen. All the work is done; all reports are updated; all of the trending is done. Everything is now updated with the new configuration. You do the same thing to create a well.”

Anyone in the company can have access to the data from the chief executive officer to the pumper in the field.

“If you note, we’re looking at all the wells. This might be the field manager, asset manager or the pumper. Each one is looking down at his or her sector. They’ve got color-coding of which ones are in trouble and can check on any area. If they are in operations view, they can look at each well individually,” Gilmore stated.

And, the pumper doesn’t have to go into the field office to get a list of things to do. He can use his cellphone to access the same screens. “He’s doing it from home and making his decisions there.

“Some customers have been putting wi-fi links at remote wells. When he gets to the remote well, he can do what he needs to do and report what he has done. He can then check the next well to work on. This is empowering the pumper to get out and do his job while keeping in close communication,” he continued.

Some clients are also using Invensys’ SmartGlance tool to show the agenda or similar tools on handheld devices such as iPads, iPhones and BlackBerrys.

Hand-held devices can access the information from multiple wells and be used to drill down on individual wells. (Photo courtesy of Invensys)

“Unconventional gas is changing the way we’re going to supply hydrocarbon energy to the world. It has significantly changed the price points in North America, and it will soon have that effect in the rest of the world.

“With a half-dozen projects in eastern Australia and major projects in India, China, South Africa and Argentina, we need a new model to develop a ‘factory’ for unconventional gas,” he concluded.

Contact the author, Scott Weeden, at sweeden@hartenergy.com.