Assessment of Production Engineering Workflows for Saudi Aramco Production Operations Surveillance Hub (POSH)

Abstract Saudi Aramco's rapidly growing portfolio of fields and wells demands the employment of innovative approaches to manage its assets efficiently in today's challenging economy. One of the main strategies that the company has adopted is the creation of a highly interactive surveillance environment called Production Operations Surveillance Hub (POSH), that supports business collaboration and efficient decision making processes. POSH enables the business to exceed geography and time by consolidating multidisciplinary team knowledge, streamlining communication, providing real-time collaboration and facilitating quick decision making. The POSH also provides an e-workplace for oil and gas production automation and optimization that allows business team members and their partners (within and outside the company) to communicate and coordinate activities from anywhere in real time. The creation of this environment started with a comprehensive assessment of the production engineering (PE) activities and processes. The assessment was conducted through electronic surveys, face-to-face interviews and interactive workshops to gather the required information from PE experts and develop a full understanding of their work processes. These “as is” processes were then transformed into “to be” workflows where technology applications were associated with each step of the process. A detailed design phase followed, which involved defining the engineering calculations, the communication protocol and the data exchange pathways among the different components of each workflow and between the workflows. A cataloging and organization phase followed in which four main themes were identified for the POSH and aligned with Saudi Aramco's intelligent fields' development strategy. The four focus areas include: well and field activities management; intelligent field equipment performance and real-time data health; electric submersible pumps (ESP) surveillance and pre-diagnostic; and well production and performance monitoring. This paper describes the assessment planning and implementation process. The paper also illustrates the value of this process through elaboration on the assessment outcome and provision of details of the POSH themes and functions. This step is essential for the success of the deployment of Saudi Aramco's first POSH and similar collaborative environments.