In response to the depression in oil prices, many operators have called a halt to the drilling of expensive new wells. To remain profitable, these oil and gas companies are seeking to reduce the cost of operating their existing wells while ensuring they are producing at the maximum recovery rate.
This becomes increasingly challenging when operators are faced with unexpected drops in production in formerly healthy wells. If a well integrity issue is suspected, it can take the best part of year, cost thousands of barrels in lost production and millions of dollars in missed revenue before an issue can be diagnosed and fixed. Now, more than ever, it is crucial for oil and gas companies to get production back to projected levels quickly.
Traditionally, diagnosing downhole issues required the well to be shut-in while an intervention was carried out. When scheduling the intervention, the operator had to plan for the total downtime required, equipment costs and team availability. However, without a full view the problem, the operator was never in control of the time the well was offline nor the costs the process incurred.
LYTT, an energy tech company, is changing the status quo by enabling operators to leverage distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) data to provide real time insights that inform a more time and cost-efficient issue resolution process.
Many oil and gas operators have installed fiber in their wells, however their return on investment on these assets has often been modest. This is because the DFOS generated from their fiber is difficult and time consuming to interpret - taking weeks of an expert’s time to glean meaningful insights. Even when the data has been interpreted and the issue has been identified, it can still take several weeks, if not months, to organize the equipment and book the team needed to take the necessary remedial action. This results in significant downtime for the well.
LYTT’s innovative and proven technology LYTT LYVE™ allows companies to overcome the big data challenge and avoid interpretation delays by distilling and transforming the masses of DFOS data into actionable insights that allow them to make the right operational decisions faster.
LYTT’s solution works by comparing the downhole data to its library of acoustic and temperature features, or “fingerprints”. LYTT has been acquiring real world data for more than five years, and when combined with its laboratory data and patented algorithms, LYTT can interpret DFOS data instantly and diagnose issues within minutes, not weeks.
In summary, LYTT’s technology helps operators quickly identify issues and make same day decisions to keep their wells at maximum production rates, saving hundreds of thousands of production dollars by bypassing the need for interventions and automating the data interpretation process.
