About a dozen years ago, after my first SPE Distinguished Lecturer circuit on a related subject, I realized from my visits to various SPE sections that there was a gap and a perceived need to provide balanced, yet comprehensive, information on Reservoir Surveillance that was both practical and didactic. During those visits, I interacted with engineers and scientists around the world who were interested in the subject. They were keen on the application side, but most of them had working knowledge in only one or two of the functional disciplines that comprise the whole field.

At the same time, the industry was just beginning to develop a structured framework for evaluating, planning, and executing surveillance programs in an integrated fashion with a focus on the bottom line. The disciplines of Options Value and Decision Analysis were coming into vogue in the oil industry, and tremendous improvements in instrumentation and surveillance systems were occurring. But the justifications for large expenditures in monitoring were getting difficult owing to low oil prices. Unfortunately, the industry was simultaneously undertaking substantially increased risk with leaner appraisal programs while entering even harsher environments and addressing complex reservoir systems.

The need for guidance on addressing these issues in a structured way could not have been greater. Yet the struggle for what a book such as this would address was vexing. Surveillance can be applied exclusively to any single functional discipline within our business, but a study on surveillance is incomplete without a consolidated view of its value to our assets in a global sense. It was also critical to inculcate the view that surveillance is an ongoing process that generates new opportunities and, hence, the inclusion of the concept of aggregation of reservoir intelligence over the asset life.

Having struck a balance on that, the next question was, who would the book’s audience be? This was partly easy because the focus had to be on the application of surveillance methods for our practicing engineers and tied to business objectives. Nonetheless, there is a rich literature in other industries, including foundational information from industrial engineering on reliability, goal-based decision analysis frameworks, and abstraction methodologies from data analytics and data mining techniques that we can learn from. I am a firm believer that in the not-so-distant future, surveillance will be a discipline on its own and we will be graduating surveillance engineers with a background in reservoir engineering, production engineering, hardware technologies, formation evaluation, and deeper understanding of surface facilities. These budding engineers need exposure at the university level.

Today, a few companies are taking bold steps in making surveillance a mainstream activity. I believe they are being visionary, as the whole construct of reservoir development in the future may revolve around risk and uncertainty management, in which surveillance plays a central role. I anticipate that universities will institute classes dedicated to surveillance in short order, and books such as this one will assist in developing our next generation of surveillance engineers with practical backgrounds in software, hardware, data management, interpretation, design, and optimization techniques.

I have tried to address these conflicting yet important requirements in this book. This has required, at times, not going into detail in some areas while exposing enough for understanding, clarity, and follow-up. To some, this may leave something to be desired, but a thick tome with a handbook-like feel was also not worthwhile because in this business, practice and experience will be irreplaceable in the end.

I hope that this book will be useful to university students as well as early to mid-career practicing engineers in production, reservoir, and operations alike. Charts, tools, and tables with practical guidance will hopefully assist in putting the book to early and good use.

Happy Surveilling!

Jitendra Kikani

June 2013