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TellWell GL - The Intelligent Agent for Gas Lift

Intelligent agents allow every surveillance engineer – regardless of experience or skill level – to make decisions with the knowledge of a world-class gas-lift analyst. Intelligent agents allow engineers to be aware of the status of all gas-lifted wells under their control. Without the help of an agent, this would be impossible with today’s high ratio of wells to surveillance engineers.

TellWell GL, IAC’s intelligent agent for gas lift, integrates continuous data such as pressure readings with well test data and predictions from well modeling tools (e.g., WellFlo, Prosper or others). Using diagnostic principles stored in a knowledge base developed by one of the world’s foremost gas-lift experts, TellWell GL evaluates each well’s condition and recommends actions for optimizing.

With TellWell GL deployed, surveillance engineers no longer need to assess the state of each well manually. TellWell GL automatically monitors wells for sub-par performance, diagnoses problems, and suggests corrective actions, which can significantly reduce the amount time the well is under-performing, thus reducing deferred production.

How does TellWell GL work?  On a typical work day, the engineer can begin his shift by reviewing a dashboard which “racks and stacks” wells according to their condition, clearly identifying the underperforming wells and what is wrong with the problem wells. The dashboard offers a prioritized view of the field so that surveillance staff can focus their attention on problem wells.

From the dashboard, the engineer can drill-down to a detailed display.  Because conditions in the field are rarely clear-cut, TellWell GL offers up to three plausible diagnoses, including explanations for each of these analyses.  Since an engineer may sometimes want to do his own analysis, TellWell GL provides comprehensive data about the well’s behavior, presented in a format consistent with a gas lift expert’s “mental model.”

For example, assume a well is flowing optimally.  Over time, the water cut rises and the reservoir pressure decreases.  The well will show initial symptoms with heading and slugging, conditions that initially will be very minor and may escape the notice of surveillance staff.  As time goes on (weeks or months), the condition gets worse.  TellWell GL agent can detect the initial symptoms and prompt for corrective action before the well’s performance seriously degrades.  Given this early warning, the staff can schedule corrective action rather than react to an emergency.  Over a broad range of cases like this example, TellWell GL can reduce deferred production and intervention costs. 

Unlike many products developed for the energy industry, TellWell GL agent has been designed from the ground up to perform effectively in a variety of production environments with variations in data quality and availability, or even when available data may be imperfect. TellWell GL integrates with virtually any well data source (Weatherford’s LOWIS™, OSIsoft’s PI System, others) and any of numerous model applications (e.g., Petroleum Experts’ Prosper, Weatherford’s WellFlo™).