SPE 144334

Automation of the Oilfield Asset via an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Based

Integrated Production Management Architecture (IPMA)
Csar Bravo, Halliburton, and Luigi Saputelli, Hess Corporation and Jos Aguilar Castro, Addison Ros, Francklin
Rivas, Universidad de los Andes, and Joseph Aguilar-Martin, CTAE- Aerospace Research and Technology
Center
Copyright 2011, Society of Petroleum Engineers
This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Digital Energy Conference and Exhibition held in The Woodlands, Texas, USA, 1921 April 2011.
This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to
reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract
Integrated Asset Management (IAM) is highly complex and requires the combined effort of several disciplines and
technological tools. The orchestration of disciplines, workflow tools, and available data are paramount issues in the oil and
gas industry today. Resource negotiation, communication language, and decision-making protocols are minor issues that
exacerbate the problem, resulting in poor and delayed decision making.
This study approaches these challenges through the implementation of innovative, distributed artificial intelligence (AI)based architecture, designed for automated production management. This architecture, known as the Integrated Production
Management Architecture (IPMA), has three layers: a connectivity layer, which allows access to the process information
sources; a semantic layer, which establishes an ontological framework to guarantee the process-information integrity during
the data interchange process developed between the applications that belong to the Enterprise Technology Information
Platform; and a management layer, which automates the production process workflows using oilfield multi-agent systems and
electronic institutions.
A virtual oilfield, based on a commercial-integrated production model (IPM) and history-matched data, was used to show
the benefits of the proposed approach. The IPM had the following configuration: Three reservoirs, eight oil wells, one flow
station, and several gathering pipelines. The IPMAs objective was to maximize asset revenue under different constraint
scenarios and changing operational events. The reactive capacity of the architecture, the effective communication between
the agents, and the proposed oilfield ontology were tested successfully. In this sense, the well function of the three layers of
IPMA was demonstrated.
This study also outlines the use of ontologies and AI techniques that are important factors in future developments of IT
solutions for the oil production industry.
Introduction
As systems technology improves, oil production automation systems have increased their complexity, and the information
has become a key asset in oil and gas enterprises. Everyday there are increasing information requirements at all enterprise
areas (e.g., process, management, marketing) to maintain total visibility and control over their processes. The management of
oil production assets requires new methods of work and new technological tools that allow the collaborative efforts between
all those involved in the production process to support accurate and timely decision making. This collaboration of efforts has
received several names in literature: Integrated Asset Management (IAM), Integrated Productions Operation, Integrated
Production Management, Integrated Reservoir Management, etc. For this study, we will use the term, Integrated Production
Management (IPM).
In literature, there are many studies about IPM, which address the enterprise information system integration to obtain all
the information related to the production process to achieve the entire vision of the asset state. Several oil production
companies are developing projects oriented to IPM. A notable project is the Integrated Operation for the High North (IOHN)
[POSC 2009], developed by the Norway Scientific Council and Statoil in association with several services companies. Other
interesting projects include the Shell Smart Fields [Potters and Kapteijn 2005], the Field of the Future from BP [Reddick
2007 and Sisk, Fanty, and Knox 2007], and the i-Field from Chevron [Unneland et al. 2005].
IPM requires the definition of data models that allow the information interchange between the applications that belong to
the enterprise production information technology (IT) platform. There are several approaches for ontological frameworks

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applied to the information interchange between production applications. One of the most interesting works in this area is
presented by Soma et al. 2008, which proposes a semantic web for oil production operations. The Oil and Gas Ontology
[POSC 2009] and the standard ISO 15926 [ISO 15926, 2003] present a well-structured ontology for oil and gas production
operations. In addition, the standards, WITSML [POSC 20032006] and PRODML [POSC 2006], are ontologies proposed
for information interchange between drilling and production applications, respectively.
All of the works listed above address some aspect of the IPM. This study proposes a complete approach over the
technological tools required to support the IPM, based on the definiton of an Integrated Production Management Architecture
(IPMA).
Proposed Approach: Integrated Production Management Architecture (IPMA)
This study proposes an IPMA to approach the oilfield production management. This architecture consists of the technological
tools required for the acquisition, treatment, and analysis of the process information. The IPMA also considers the business
processes automation and the decision-making support. The architecture is composed of three layers:
Connectivity Layer: defines data acquisition, treatment, and interpretation mechanisms.
Semantic Layer: consists of an ontological framework that facilitates effective information interchange between
production applications.
Management Layer: defines intelligent workflow automation mechanisms based on AI techniques.
A scheme of IPMA is shown in Fig. 1.

ManagementLayer
BusinessProcessAutomation
MultiagentSystems/ElectronicInstitutions

SemanticLayer
ProductionOntology
DataMetaModel

ConectivityLayer
InformationSourcesAccess
SWAdaptors
WebServices
Fig. 1 Integration Production Management Architecture.

Connectivity Layer
The IPMA Connectivity Layer defines mechanisms to allow access to process state information, which is stored in several
information sources. The objective of this layer is to extract process information from data sources and expose it in a
common scheme. Because XML is considered a standard in the data interchange between applications at enterprise
environments, this language is used to expose the information at the Connectivity Layer.
In the oil and gas industry, there are several data sources with information about the production process state. Some
important data sources include:

Production Databases: these data sources store the information about the configuration of the field facilities (e.g.,
wells, flow stations, plants, manifolds). For each facility, information is stored about configuration (e.g., parts, type),
potential and actual production, and product quality. Generally, these data sources are managed using relational
databases that use standard data access drivers, such as ODBC.
Economic Information and Goals: this data source contains information about operational expenses (OPEX), final
product sell prices, and field production goals. Generally, this kind of information is stored in Enterprise Resources
Planning (ERP) systems, which provide proprietary data-access drivers.
Optimization Systems: these systems maximize field profitability by providing the possibility of building
surface/subsurface models, including well models and surface-net models (e.g., pipelines, flow stations, plants, and
manifolds). The access mechanisms to these systems are data-access drivers provided by the manufacturer.

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For each data source, it is necessary to build software adaptors to wrap the original data access interface into a common
schema. The data sources are then exposed as web services. These web services will allow standardized access to all data
sources. Fig. 2 describes the connectivity layer configuration.

Services
Services
Repository

WSDL

Wrappers
DataExposure

APIs
DataExtraction

Applications

Fig. 2Connectivity Layer Implementation Schema.

Semantic Layer
The semantic layer provides meaning to the information interchanged between the enterprise applications that is intelligible
for each of the IT platform components and end users. The Semantic Layer is composed of an ontology that has four
components:
Meta-data: This data defines the information about location and the source of the data that is represented by the
ontology concepts.
General purpose ontologies: These ontologies are subsets of well-known public or private ontologies that contain
concepts useful for the domain in which the semantic layer will be implemented.
Domain-specific concepts: These concepts represent the ontology that belong to the enterprise domain.
Data Meta Model: This model is a common structure that defines the concepts that belong to the semantic layer. This
data meta-model is characterized by the meta-data, which defines the information to be exposed for each concept in
the ontology.
The main component of the semantic layer is the Data Meta Model (DMM). DMM defines the structure of each
component of the architecture in a generalized way. DMM uses the production unit as a center. The production unit is any
facility at the enterprise that generates a product (intermediate or final) through the application of a method and the use of a
specific quantity of resources (energy, supplies, etc) and has the following characteristics:
Maintains a production goal and attends to a set of constraints.
Generates information about its state for monitoring purposes.
Produces wastes (in addition to the generated products), which should be properly managed to minimize the
environmental impact [Chacn 2001].
The DMMs objective is to represent all production units through a generic schema. The DMM is an adaptation of the
Product Resource Order Staff Architecture (PROSA) model [Wyns 1999], which represents an enterprise production unit by
three main elements: products, resources, and orders. In addition, some concepts of Production Markup Language
(PRODML) [POSC 2006] (relative to oil production operations) are used to complement the DMM. As a result, a production
model is obtained, which is composed by the following elements: resources, products, methods, condition, providers, and
clients. The DMM objective is to reduce the complexity of the ontological framework, making easier to implement the
ontology. The DMM concepts are exposed in Fig. 3 using UML notation [Bravo, et al. 2010].

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Production Unit
<<unit>>

Provider

Client

<<unit>>

<<unit>>

1..1

Condition
<<component>>

1..*

Method
1..*

<<component>>

Resource

1..*

<<component>>

1..*

Product

Event

<<component>>

<<event>>

Fig. 3Production Unit Scheme.

Oil Production Ontology

This study discusses an implementation of the IPMA to the oil production process. In the semantic layer this is defined by the
most important concepts of the oil production domain. These concepts comprise an ontology called Oil Production Ontology
[Bravo et al. 2010].
The oil production ontology is composed of the specific domain concepts defined for the semantic layer, which are based
on the DMM and use concepts from the general-purpose ontologies.
Following the approach presented in Soma et al. 2008, the general-purpose concepts to use in the Semantic Layer are the
concepts proposed in the Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology (SWEET) developed by the California
Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA [NASA, CalTech, 2009]. These concepts are the basis for the
oil production ontology construction. The concepts of the SWEET ontology used to build the oil production ontology are as
follows:
Temporal entity in which notions about time-measure units are defined
System states in which possible system states are defined, and infrastructure, which defines concepts about facilities
and equipment used in production environments
The oil production ontology uses, as a central concept, the definition of the production units that can be found in an oil
field, such as oil well, flow station, manifold, and plant. The rest of the concepts of the ontology are defined around the
definition of these production units and are related between them through relationships of composition (has) or inheritance (is
a). All concept structures are based on the DMM. To give an example of the structure for oil production ontology concepts,
Fig. 4 illustrates some of the oil well production unit concepts.

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Production
Unit
Tubing

Oil
Has product

Is a

Gas

Has resource
Has product

Oil Well
Has method

GasLift
ESP

Has resource

Has method

Has resource

Has condition

Has resource

Oil Well
State

Has resource
Has resource

Is a

System
State
From Sweet Ontologies

Casing
Choke
Valve
Injection
Gas
Well
Variables
Well
Information

Fig. 4Oil Well Production Unit Concepts.

Management Layer: e-OilFieldInstitution. The IPMA Management Layers objective is to provide a workflow
automation layer of the oilfield business process. The Management Layer is composed of an electronic institution (EI) called
e-OilFieldInstitution. This EI automates the workflows involved in the oil production process.
Electronic Insulations (EIs)
An EI is a specialization of multi-agent systems that emulates the social institutions operations in which actors (agents) have
autonomy, but their behavior is regulated by a set of social rules to guarantee that the objective of the institution could be met
(Esteva et al. 2001; Noriega et al. 2002; Sierra 2004; Arcos et al. 2005; Garca-Camino et al. 2005).
In this study, the common facilities that are found in an oil production field are represented as intelligent agents that
belong to an EI. In this EI, the oilfield business processes are represented as a sequence of scenes in which the agents interact
to achieve the oilfield production goal.
Dialogical Framework (DF)
An EI is composed of a dialogical framework (DF) that defines the following:
The roles that EI actors could develop and the valid speech acts, which could be used for the communication between
them
A performative structure, which defines the set of scenes that could take place in the institution.
A set of social norms, which regulate the behavior of the actors in the EI. A detailed description of the eOilFieldInstitution components is presented below.
The Dialogical Framework (DF) of an EI is defined as a tuple:
DF=(O;L;I;RI;RE;Rs)
Where,
O= Ontology used in the institution
L=The language used for communication between actors (agents)
I=The valid speech acts or ilocutory particles
RI=the internal roles that actors could develop to regulate the institution
RE=The external roles (RE) that actors could develop to regulate the institution
Rs= The relationship between roles (Rs)

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For the architecture proposed in this work, the DF components are:

O: Oil Production Ontology (defined in previous sections)
L: OWL (Ontology Web Language)
I: {agree, failure, inform, inform-done, inform-results, promise, query, refuse, request, open, close}
RI: {Asset Manager}
RE: {Producer, Provider, Client, Optimizer, Maintenance}
Roles
The notion of the role is fundamental to the EIs specification. Roles allow individuals (agents) to be involved in the
activities of an EI. An agent has the obligation to adopt a role belonging to an EI. When an agent is given a specific role, he
should adopt the behavior pattern of that role. In consequence, all agents that adopt the same role have the same rights,
duties, and opportunities. A role could be defined as a finite set of dialogical actions, where the objective of these actions is
to represent the role capacities [Esteva et al. 2001].
In each scene, agents assume specific roles, which have defined behaviors within the EI. This allows agents to develop
tasks that verify the EI well function and the accomplishment of the EI objectives.
In the e-OilFieldInstitution, the following roles are defined:
Asset Manager: The institution regulator. The Asset Manager is responsible for the programming and supervision of
production execution. In addition, the Asset Manager guarantees the accomplishment of the production goal.
Producer: The producer role controls the production units and manages the production rate and the resource
consumption of each production unit. (A production process is executed by one or several production units.)
Provider: Providers supply the necessary resources to execute the production process.
Client: Clients represent actors within the institution and are the final receptors of the products generated for
production units. The production goal is established per client requirements.
Optimizer: the institution objective is to reach the production goal based on optimal criteria defined for each
enterprise. To reach the optimal way to execute the production process, an optimizer is assigned. The optimizer will
execute the optimization models for the institution production program.
Maintenance: This role is in charge of developing maintenance tasks for the production units of the institution.
Note: Some of these roles are internal roles (Asset Manager), which are the institution regulators, and
the other ones are external roles, which are developed by actors that participate in the institution
but do not have any regulatory function for it. Likewise, depending on the role type, this could be
developed by one or several agents. In the e-OilFieldInstituion, the asset manager should be
developed by only one agent (i.e., it must be only one institution regulator). The rest of the roles
could be developed for several agents at the same time.
Performative Structure: The performative structure of an electronic institution defines the set of scenes and
transitions in which dialogical activities between agents are developed. The main performative structure of eOilFieldInstitution is called the Production Management Performative Structure (PMPS). The PMPS is defined as a
tuple:
PMPS = (S;T; s0; s;E; f L; f T; f OE;C;ML; )

Where,
S: set of scenes = {Init (I), Production Programming (PP), Production Execution (PE), End (E)}
T: set of transitions = {Programming Start (PS), Execution Start (ES), New Programming Request (NPR), New
Programming (NP), Production End (PE)}
s0: initial scene=I
s: final scene=E
E: set of arcs = EI U EO
The performative structure developed for the management layer is shown in Fig. 5.

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Init
Start Program
Production Program

NewProgram
Request

New
Program

Start Execution

Production Execution

End Production
End
Fig. 5Production Management Performative Structure.

Scenes
Scenes define the dialogical activities between agents through interaction protocols described as state machines. When the
interaction protocols are too complex, a scene could be described as a sub-performative structure, which has scenes and
transitions inside.
The PMPS has four scenes:
Init: initial scene. In this scene, all agents that participate at the e-OilFieldInstitution should enter.
Production Program: in this scene, the optimal production scenario is calculated by the Optimizer Agent. This scene
is described as a sub-performative structure that has the following scenes:
o Begin: Field Manager, Producer, and Provider agents enter to the production program performative structure.
o Information Search: The Field Manager Agent gathers information about the state, requirements, and capacities
of all producers, providers, and clients to design the production program. This scene is described by a request
interaction protocol [FIPA].
o Production Quotes Calculation: The Field Optimizer Agent calculates the optimal production scenario based on
the information gathered by the Field Manager Agent. Once individual production goals and energy quotes are
calculated, the Field Optimizer Agent informs to the Field Manager Agent the optimal scenario.
o End: Agents leave the production program performative structure.
Production Execution: In this scene, the production program is executed, based on the optimal scenario calculated in
the previous scene. This scene is described as a sub-performative structure that has four scenes:
o Begin: Field Manager, Producer, Provider, Client, and Maintenance agents enter the production execution
performative structure.
o Production: The Field Manager Agent gives the producer and provider agents the order to execute the production
program. Once the production execution starts, the Field Manager Agent monitors the process so as to react in
case of any abnormal situation occurs.
o Maintenance: The Field Maintenance Agent receives a maintenance request from the producer and provider
agents that come from production with failure states. This scene is described by a request interaction protocol.
o End: Agents leave the production execution performative structure.
Note:

In case of changes in the production goals or if operational events occurs, agents could return to
the production program scene to re-calculate the production scenario.
End: production execution final. All agents leave the e-OilFieldInstitution.

All agent interactions at the institution are regulated by the performative structures, scenes, and transitions described
above. In this sense, the enterprise workflows are represented by these performative structures and automated by the agents
activity in the electronic institution. Each agent could have reactivity, proactivity, mobility, social behavior, and even
autonomy, but its actions are bounded by the protocols defined at the performative structures and by social norms (described
in the next section) to guarantee the success of the institution.

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Social Norm.
Norms impose socially linked rules on the agents, which restrict their behavior to reach the institution objectives. In our
case, norms will enable the reaching of a production program in a specific time, assigning optimal production quotes and
resource quantities, processing maintenance tasks in an obligated way, and reacting to failures in a secure and planned
manner.
An example of norms defined for e-OilFieldInstitution is the norm that regulates the time to access information from the
provider role. This norm is described as follows:
Access to Provider Information
With this norm, a time limit is established to the provider agent to deliver information about its state, which is requested
by the Asset Manager agent at the Information Search scene. The norm has the following structure:
OBLIGED (utter (InformationSearch, ProviderIR, inform-results (ES, Provider, FM, AssetManager, Information))
BEFORE tmax)
The components of the access to provider information norm are:
Scene: Information Search
State: Provider Information Gathering
Illocution (speech act): Inform Results
Sender: Provider
Receiver: Asset Manager
Content: Provider State Information
Obligation: to deliver the illocution before a time tmax (where tmax is a customizable parameter)
Three additional norms were defined with the same structure of the norm described above (see Bravo et al. 2010). These
norms were designed to establish time limits to the following tasks: accessing information from the producer, calculation of
the optimal production quotes, and executing production.
OilField Multi-Agent System (MAS)
To accomplish the roles defined in the dialogical framework, a set of oil-production domain agents were designed. These
agents are the components of a multi-agent system, called the Oilfield Multi-Agent System (MAS). Agents of the oilfield
MAS are categorized as Production Unit Agents and Service Agents. Components of the oilfield MAS are shown in Fig. 6.

OilFieldMAS
ProductionUnits
Agents
Well
(Producer)

Process

Goals/
Scenario

ServiceAgents

FieldManager
(AssetManager)

Process
Information
FlowStation
(Client)

Optimizer
(Optimizer)

State
Maintenance
(Maintenance)

EnergySupplier
(Provider)

Fig. 6Oilfield MAS.

Production Unit Agents

Production unit agents represent the production units that compose the oilfield. These agents are in charge of the
production units information management and control. These agents can take the following roles in the institution: Producer,
Provider, and Client.

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Production Unit Agents have a common structure, which defines their objectives, services, capacities, and restrictions.
This structure is based on the MASINA model presented by Aguilar et al. 2008.
Each agent that is defined for a production unit has correspondence with the definition of that production unit at the Oil
Production Ontology; in this sense, the agent attributes have correspondence with the concepts defined at the ontology. The
production unit agents defined in the oilfield MAS are listed below.
Oil Well Agent: controls the oil well operations at the field. This agent has a correspondence with the oil well concept
defined in the Oil Production Ontology.
Flow Station Agent: controls the flow station operations in the field. This agent has a correspondence with the flow
station concept defined in the Oil Production Ontology.
Energy Supplier Agent: controls the energy generation plant operations in the field. This agent has a correspondence
with the plant concept defined in the Oil Production Ontology.
Service Agents
Service agents provide services to the oilfield production units. There are three types of service agents:
Field Maintenance Agent: this agent is in charge of the production units required maintenance.
Field Optimizer Agent: this agent calculates the optimal oil field production scenario.
Oil Field Manager: this agent is responsible for accomplishing the oilfield production goal. The Oilfield Manager
interacts with the Field Optimizer Agent to calculate the optimal production scenario and to assign both the individual
production goal (per well) and energy quote per each production unit at the field. At the production execution, the
Oilfield Manager monitors the production process and takes action in case that any abnormal event occurs.
Experiment
To show an application example of the IPMA, an experiment has been designed to simulate an oilfield operation. The
objectives of this experiment are:
To demonstrate the well function of the IPMA through its implementation into the oil production process
optimization problem.
To validate the reactive behavior of the electronic institution implemented at the management layer, when changes in
the operational conditions occur.
To validate the layers integration at the experiment execution.
To validate the well function of the ontology as a communication element in the architecture.
A virtual oilfield, based on a commercial integrated production model (IPM) and history-matched data, was used to show
the benefits of the proposed approach. The process selected to run the experiment was an oilfield with the following
configuration: three reservoirs, eight oil wells, and one flow station (see Fig. 7).
FlowStation

ProductionManifold1

Well1

ProductionManifold2

Well2 Well3

Reservoir1

Well4

ProductionManifold3

Well5 Well6

Reservoir2

Fig. 7Virtual Oilfield Structure.

Well7

Well8

Reservoir3

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To resolve the production optimization problem in an oilfield with the schema presented above, we will make an
application of IPMA.
The oilfield optimization problem could be described as follow:
Objective Function: reach the production goal. The production goal is set at 159 MNBPD.
Restrictions:
Maximum field production: 200000 NBPD
Potential Production Well 1: 24000 NBPD
Potential Production Well 2: 20000 NBPD
Potential Production Well 3: 7000 NBPD
Potential Production Well 4: 28000 NBPD
Potential Production Well 5: 20000 NBPD
Potential Production Well 6: 10000 NBPD
Potential Production Well 7: 30000 NBPD
Potential Production Well 8: 10000 NBPD
Numbers of Separators: 3
Separation Capacity per each separator: 50000 BBPD
The handled variables in this experiment are the production goal and the choke valves opening rate per well.
A simulation for a field with the configuration described above was executed using a commercial simulator program that
took the initial date of 01/01/2010 and the final date of 01/02/2010, using one day as a sample interval. Data gathered for the
simulator was stored in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, which served as data sources for the experiment. A set of software
adaptors based on the POI library [Apache 2006] was used to gather the data generated by the simulator.
The EIDE suite [IIIA-CSIC n.d.] was used in the Electronic Institution Implementation. This suite is composed of tools
that allow for designing, validating, and executing an electronic institution. The semantic layer is composed of a subset of
concepts defined in the Oil Production Ontology, which are considered Java classes.
The e-OilFieldInstitution was implemented at the management layer and composed of the oilfield MAS with the
following configuration:
One Oil well Agent performing a Producer role, which will control the eight oil wells of the field.
One Flow Station Agent performing a Provider role.
One Energy Supplier Agent performing a Provider role.
One Field Optimizer Agent performing an Optimizer role.
One Field Maintenance Agent performing a Maintenance role.
One Field Manager Agent performing an Asset Manager role.
IE agents are in charge of obtaining the asset state information from several data sources (specified in the description of
the Connectivity Layer). Based on the asset state and in the production goals defined as input parameters, the Field Manager
Agent will request the Field Optimizer Agent that calculates the system configuration at optimal conditions, establishing the
production and energy quotes per well. For the results obtained from the Field Optimizer Agent, the Field Manager Agent
can decide to change the asset configuration through the modification of handled variables.
Simulations and Results. The experiment began with a production goal of 159000 NBPD to the field and a separation
capacity of 50000 NBPD for each separator at the flow station. The production goal is then modified to 120000 NBPD to
observe the IPMA reaction to this event. Finally, Well 8 is stopped so as to generate a new scenario.
The initial goal is reached by the Field Manager Agent, setting the opening of the choke valves per well (through
Producer Agent action) at a certain percentage, which generates a set of differential pressure rates for each well, as shown in
Fig. 8.

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Fig. 8Differential Pressure per Well. Scenario 1.

The total production rate for this configuration is shown in Fig. 9.

Fig. 9Production Rate for Scenario 1.

At sample instant #15 (day 01/15/10), the Field Manager Agent received an order to change the production goal to
120000 NBPD. The Field Manager Agent, Producer Agent, and Energy Supplier Agent move themselves to the Production
Program scene (see Fig. 10). At that scene, a new production scenario is calculated to reach the new production goal. Once
the Production Program scene is finished, the agents go the Execution Program scene, which will function with the
configuration defined for the new scenario.

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Fig. 10Agents Entering the Production Program Scene.

The new scenario set an adjustment for the opening of the oil well choke valves (through the Producer Agent), and as a
consequence, an adjustment in the differential pressure for each well is generated, as is shown in Fig. 11.

Fig. 11Changes in the Differential Pressures. Scenario 2.

As shown in Fig. 11, increases in the differential pressure at each choke valve are generated, which is the result of the
changes in the valves opening rate. As a consequence, the production of the field is changed to 120000 NBPD (see Fig. 12).

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Fig. 12Field Production Adjustment. Scenario 2.

At sample instant #25 (day 01/25/10), Well 8 was stopped. A production re-programming was suited to adjust the
production rates of the remaining wells to maintain the production of the field as close as possible to the production goal.
Fig. 13 illustrates the adjustment in the differential pressure for each well. We can see the total loss of the pressure in well
8 and the decrease in the differential pressure for Wells 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 to compensate for the production loss from Well 8.
To accomplish this, a new Production Program was executed to redefine the production scenario, and a new Production
Execution scene then started with the new configuration.

Fig. 13Adjustment of Differential Pressure for Scenario 3.

As shown in Fig. 14, as a consequence of the changes made at the field configuration by the IPMA e-OilFieldInstitution,
the production rate is maintained at the production goal.

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Fig. 14Field Production Scenario 3.

In Fig. 15, we can see how the rest of the wells compensate for the production loss from well 8.

Fig. 15Production per Well for Scenario 3.

Analysis of Results
As shown in the simulation and results section, the implementation of IPMA was effective to accomplish the optimization
objective set for the experiment to maintain the production goal. The objective was reached using the three layers of the
architecture.
When operational events occurred (changes in the production goal and Well 8 stopped), IPMA reacted effectively,
performing the necessary changes in the field configuration to reach the production goal. This behavior demonstrates the
reactive capacity of the architecture.
State process data gathering and the monitoring of the process information in real time was possible thanks to the
connectivity layer, which allowed access to the several information sources using the software adaptors developed for this
layer. Likewise, the semantic layer was useful in guaranteeing the effective communication between the agents during the
process execution. The Oil Production Ontology provided the necessary concepts of the information interchange at the
production process. Finally, the management layer worked as an intelligent workflow automation tool through the eOilFieldInstitution implementation.
Conclusions
In this study, the implementation of Intelligent Production Management Architecture (IPMA) to the oil production process
was presented. In the case study, the oil production domain ontology, called the Oil Production Ontology, was defined. In
addition, an electronic institution for the oil production process workflow automation and a multi-agent system for the oil
production management were presented.
The first layer of the architecture, the connectivity layer, allowed the disposal of a connectivity schema to the diverse
applications and information sources that were found in the oil production industry. This scheme is based on an XML layer
that is composed of wrappers for the connection interfaces and web services that make information exposure possible to the
entire enterprise information platform.

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In the Oil Production Ontology that composes the semantic layer, a large set of oil production domain concepts were
defined, which were required for the information interchange between applications with integrity, accuracy, and in a timely
manner.
At the management layer, the e-OilFieldInstitution automates the workflows required in the oil production process, using
multi-agent systems and electronic institutions. Norms implemented at the institution help to accomplish the process
restrictions (e.g., time, costs, information delivery), taking advantage of the multi-agent system flexibility to control the oil
production process.
To prove the well function of the architecture, an experiment to manage an oilfield was designed. The simulation results
proved the efficient integral performance of all IPMA layers. In addition, the results proved the system reactivity to the
operational events. The IPMA provided an effective solution to the production optimization problem.
Benefits
The benefits that could be obtained using IPMA are listed below:
A standardized mechanism for accessing the process state information sources.
An Oil Production Ontology with the main concepts required for the information interchange between production
applications.
Decrease in the information search time.
A flexible and intelligent mechanism for the oilfield business-process automation.
Business-process automation schema, which allow for an emerging optimization mechanism for oilfield management,
resulting from the coordination and negotiation between the EI agents in the management layer.
Nomenclature
AI
DB
DF
DMM
E
EI
ERP
ES
I
IPMA
IT
JDBC
L
NP
NPR
O
ODBC
OPEX
OWL
PE
PE
PMPS
POSC
PP
PRODML
PROSA
PS
RI
Rs
S
SWEET
T
XML

= Artificial Intelligence
= Database
= Dialogical Framework
= Meta-Data Model
= End
= Electronic Institution
= Enterprise Resource Planning
= Execution Start
= Ilocutory Particles
= Integrated Production Management Architecture
= Information Technology
= Java Database Connectivity
= Language
= New Programming
= New Programming Request
= Ontology
= Open Database Connectivity
= Operative Expenses
= Ontology Web Language
= Production End
= Production Execution
= Production Management Performative Structure
= Petrotechnical Open Standard Consortium
= Production Programming
= Production Modeling Language
= Product Resource Order Staff Architecture
= Programming Start
= Internal Roles
= Relationship between Roles
= Set of Scenes
= Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology
= Set of Transitions
= eXtended Markup Language

16

SPE 144344

Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the support of Universidad de los Andes, LAAS and PCP (Post grade Cooperation Program) FranceVenezuela for the support provided during this research. We would also like to thank and HESS Corporation for the support
provided during this research.
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