Publication Rights Reserved
This paper is to be presented at the 39th Annual Fall Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers on Oct. 11–14, 1964, in Houston, Tex., and is considered the property of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Permission to publish is hereby restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words, with no illustrations, unless the paper is specifically released to the press by the Editor of JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the Executive Secretary. Such abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is granted on request, providing proper credit is given that publication and the original presentation of the paper.
Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines with the paper.
This automation system provides for automatic custody transfer, well testing, surveillance, and supervisory control for leases and individual wells.
Each well is automatically switched to gauge in a programmed sequence and for a programed time duration; to determine the net oil, water, and gas production of each well; to transmit this data via wire line or microwave to a central office where it is processed and stored in the computer's memory; and to provide weekly and monthly production reports.
Automatically clean, measure, and ship crude production from cleaning plant to pipeline departments; furnish cleaning plant oil inventory and chemical usage in treating, daily and on demand.
Automatically check all critical points of operation at guage and tank settings and advise location and nature of any malfunction, monitor each well's flow and transmit alarms to central office for determining well producing days as well as malfunction information. This includes local control, remote control, and computer control.
— Data shall be automatically accumulated in the field, transmitted to the central point, and processed as required for operations and accounting needs.
—Overriding the above considerations are:
Reliability
Expandability
Ease of Maintenance
Training of operating and maintenance personnel.
Oil Field Management - The New Way.
Single integrated systems that monitors and controls oil field operations at widely separated points on a round-the-clock basis and, at the same time, provides advanced data processing services to both management and engineering personnel, are now becoming reality with present day computers and instrumentation equipment.
Computers, such as the IBM System/360 now offers in a single system the compatible, expandable, monitoring, processing, control, and communication abilities needed.
