Adesanwo, Moradeyo & Bello, Oladele & Lazarus, Sony & Denney, Tommy. (2017).

Smart
Alarming for Intelligent Surveillance of Electrical Submersible Pump Systems.
10.2118/187079-MS. Electrical submersible pump (ESP) technology has evolved to
become a critical component in many production operations and well productivity
enhancement. However, one of the important challenges in real-time ESP-enabled well
management is the implementation of intelligent systems that can assist human
operators in making control decisions. Modern technological advances have resulted
in increasingly complicated processes that present considerable challenges in
performance analysis and well management for successful operation of electrical
submersible pumps. Given the size, scope, and complexity of modern engineered
electrical submersible pump systems, it is becoming significantly more difficult
for engineers to anticipate, diagnose and control serious abnormal events in a
timely manner. Failure of the operator to exercise the appropriate mitigation
actions often has an adverse effect on the process safety quality, run life,
surface hardware and downhole equipment. Hence, there exist considerable incentives
to develop intelligent alarm systems for automating electrical submersible pump
system parameters estimation and optimization. The difficulties associated with
implementing intelligent alarms and the opportunities for improvements are even
greater in the advanced wells equipped with electrical submersible pumps due to
complex flow and transport process challenges.
In this paper, a state estimator is implemented in the form of data assimilation
algorithm using a variety of data-driven models and continued ESP operations
performance properties measurements. The data assimilation3 estimates continuously
the state variables of the data-driven ESP models to provide a feedback to an
online intelligent alarm monitoring system. The intelligent alarm surveillance
system workflow combines streaming surface controller data, well head data and
sensor data to intelligently define thresholds and determine when a given
measurement is out of range and human intervention is needed. Further multi-signal
data analysis is employed to characterize given events and perform dynamical
optimization (based on define objective functions and operations constraints) for
recommending real-time controller set point updating and corrective actions during
real time ESP operations. Such optimization framework has the potential to improve
production while simultaneously providing cost savings by reducing remote human
intervention and the deployment of personnel to field locations.
The web-based alarm surveillance system has been successfully tested in multiple
fields to verify the functionalities of the alarming system. Numerous abnormal
events were identified in the field and faults signatures and trends were stored in
the knowledge database along with the corresponding alarm mitigation strategy. The
smart alarming produces superior results in several case studies performed on
multiple Permian basin wells and fields. This new smart alarming approach will
greatly help in the increasing real time artificial lift ESP management over
existing conventional basic ESP alarm monitoring methods.