Development of a System for Remote Control and Monitoring of Wellheads

Abstract

Wellheads have a major role in ensuring well integrity, providing access to the wellbore and flow control. It is vital to constantly monitor the wellhead fluid pressure and temperature effectively in order to maintain the full control of wellbore fluids. Over the years, wellheads have remained purely mechanical and have heavily relied on physical on-site monitoring. There is need to develop a reliable and accessible monitoring solutions for the wellheads in order to increase the effectiveness of the well integrity management systems and to get the full benefits of the wellhead data by incorporating the emerging data analytics technologies. This project details the development of a system that gathers wellhead temperature, pressure and the accurate valve position at any given time. The data gathering systems used in this project entail smart sensor technology capable of withstanding the wellbore pressures and temperatures. The system transmits the data securely, using blockchain, to an online platform where advanced data analytics using MATLAB and machine learning algorithms are used for visual data representation. The online platform additionally provides a means of real-time valve position control and takes into account the exact revolutions required for the opening and closure of the valve hence keeping a record for maintenance purposes. The innovative use and analysis of the data gathered form the wellhead provides insights for the operators and service companies and gives a way for setting ang thresholds in order to get alerts based in their custom specifications. This paper documents the development of a system that gathers wellhead data and provides a means of remote control of the wellhead valves. It covers the design phase, selection of appropriate sensor placement locations on the wellhead, the design of valve actuators, offline data gathering systems and the online data analysis and valve control platform. The project also pays a key attention towards the secure data transmission techniques and highlights the benefits of incorporating such a system in the oil and gas upstream sector.