A Decision Support System for Materials Selection of Well Completion in the Modern Oil and Gas Industry

摘要

This paper describes the improvements of a software program developed for the materials selection of OCTGs and well completion components. The previous version of the program, released in 1998 and presented during 1997 and 2000 NACE Conferences, has been reviewed in terms of technical know-how and information technology to keep up with the modern industry. The most remarkable improvements in the field of technical know-how include the introduction of a number of well completion layouts as well as the management of other types of fluids and well services in addition to reservoir fluids and hydrocarbon production service. Other significant features consist of the development of a pass/fail approach for the selection of CRAs for sour service and the formulation of rules to help the corrosion engineer to select the most suitable test methods and test conditions. Moreover, new materials grades that became available in the last ten years have been added. The improvements in the information technology led also to the development of a new software framework. The new product is a web application, accessible from the company intranet network. It is a shared tool that employees can use, with different levels of authorization, reflecting their own skills and technical competence. Corrosion experts have also the chance to install a "local version" of the software on their laptops and subsequently synchronize all the data with a centralized database. Normal users are allowed limited access to the program functionalities, while users qualified as corrosion experts have the credentials to modify the software basic rules. Administrators can "publish" users' simulations on a centralized public library. In brief, this paper wants to remark how the concept of "expert system", born during the late 80s and developed during the 90s, is not out-of-date in the modern industry, but on the contrary, it is still topical and it has changed its shape in the last 20 years thanks to the improvements on information technology and industry know-how.