The well environment is harsh and can limit the operative life of conventional electronic down-hole gauges. In recent years fibre optic based measurement systems have been developed and well deployments have proven this technology to be inherently robust.
Fibre optic sensing can deliver comprehensive well data which is on the verge of making a step change in well and reservoir monitoring capability. A unique ability of fibre optic technology is that a single fibre can capture in real-time temperature variations and the acoustic noise field, from top to bottom of the well. An overall research challenge is to understand the flow generated acoustic events in the wellbore in order to understand the response of the fibre and perform high-fidelity data interpretation of real well fibre optic surveys.
This project is a national collaboration between organisations performing research within fibre optics, signal processing, flow modelling, machine learning and petroleum. The objective is to develop methods for analysing and processing distributed measurements to support the application of fibre optic sensing technology in oil and gas wells. The planned work packages focus on; physical experiments, numerical acoustic modelling, machine learning and method integration in a transient well flow model used to analyse real well surveys. Development and testing of models will be performed in cooperation with the industry.
DIFI-PRO is a knowledge building project financed by the Norwegian Research Council, Equinor and Lundin.
The project will be executed by research partners NORCE, SINTEF, UiB and UiS. One PhD student will be educated at UiB and a post-doctoral research fellow will be appointed at UiS and collaborate with Northwestern University, Illinois. Scientific results obtained will be disseminated through PhD-dissertations, presentations at international conferences, proceedings and international journals and annual workshops.
