As global oil prices decline, the need to produce onshore oil and gas from well pads more efficiently grows. In series of Well Pad Automation Webinars, one of the webinars addressed how to ensure production measurement compliance, control emissions and optimized transfer logistics.
Denver Smart VP Business Development – O&G Flow Group
The three most common challenges are meeting production targets and measurement compliance, improving health, safety and environmental (HSE) performance and improving capital efficiency and cash flow. The challenges surrounding production targets and measurement compliance include allocation and accounting errors, actual and unaccounted production losses, and fiscal transfer operations efficiency and effectiveness.
Reactive operations and maintenance, emission events, and spill avoidance are key HSE challenges. For capital efficiency and cash flow, opportunities often exist to manage lease production and inventory more effectively, improve operations and maintenance effectiveness, achieve cost-effective monitoring, control and automation, and improve project execution efficiency.
Denver shared an example of a 900 barrel/day (bpd) Wellpad with 200 barrel (bbl) hauls. With manual gauging having a 1% error per haul, this results in nearly $300,000 in annual exposure. With open/end gauge rounding of 0.125 inches, annual exposure from unaccounted for production is just over $60,000. Total exposure from these measurement inaccuracies is almost $360,000 per year.
As with some of the other Well Pad Automation webinars, there are some enlightening poll questions. Denver asked what is the typical range of uncertainty encountered associated with manual tank gauging operations in the field?
If you’re in the onshore oil & gas production business, check out the recorded webinar to see some ways to reduce this uncertainty and potential lost production.
Other recorded webinars in the series include:
You can also connect and interact with other oil & gas professionals in the Oil & Gas group in the Emerson Exchange 365 community.