American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.
The installation and implementation of a large supervisory control system, comprising 500 or more producing wells and ten or more remote telemetry stations, is a major undertaking effecting changes in producing equipment, operating organization and communications. The best approach towards achieving the economic incentives of such a system, smoothly and rapidly, is through detailed coordinating and planning.
Decisions regarding the concepts of installation and operation, plus an approach to the selection of personnel, training of personnel and the development of a working organization are presented. Major problem areas encountered in presented. Major problem areas encountered in the system implementation are presented.
It is the intention that this paper be a companion paper to SPE 2143 "Feasibility Study of oil Field Automation." The shaded area of Figure 1 refers to material to be covered by this paper. paper. Who should be responsible for system installation? Once the decision is made to install a large supervisory control system, this is the first major decision to resolve. The initial reaction to this question is almost certain to be somewhat like the following statement. "I think we should find a prime contractor for the project and give it to them on a turnkey basis for we don't have the technical knowledge within our organization to do the job." The reason stated for the conclusion may be true, but following this approach will only lead to trouble.
WHO SHOULD UNDERTAKE SYSTEMS RESPONSIBILITY?
There are four potential sources for the assignment of systems responsibility - the telemetry system supplier, the computer system supplier, a consulting engineering firm, and the company production operating organization. In the cases of the first three, a turnkey contract with a prime contractor is the means to achieve systems engineering for the project. If the company chooses the apparent easy way out by letting a turnkey contract, a number of obvious advantages are obtained as follows:
One or more areas of specific technical knowledge in telemetry systems, computers and computer programming can be manifested within the prime contractor.
