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Background
At the end of 1995, a number of oil companies organised
a workshop on permanent downhole instrumentation. One
of the important conclusions of this workshop was that
the operating companies foresaw that in the (near) future
multiple monitoring and control devices will be placed
in a well. Such a well is designated as an intelligent
well.
For such a well it was deemed essential that downhole
instrumentation as well as wellhead monitoring systems
and control elements could be connected to a single
read-out and control unit. The target was a flexible
system with a compatible power supply and data communication
protocol; avoiding high cost for developing interfaces
for the operators, and insuring that new devices could
be used within existing system infrastructures without
the need to adjust interfaces. Finally, by the agreement
on a common data and energy transmission method, the
effort required by operators and the service industry
introducing such new technology could be minimised.
During the kick-off workshop a task force was formed,
consisting of Shell, SAGA and Statoil. This task force
has investigated to which extent standardisation is
required and how this can be achieved in the most effective
and efficient way. The task force initiated the "Intelligent
Well Instrumentation Standardisation" project,
or its acronym, the IWIS project. The IWIS project was
rated as 'very important' with the final objective "to
arrive at recommended practices to ensure compatibility
in data and energy transmission for intelligent wells".
In March 1996, the task force presented the IWIS project
to all the participating oil companies, being BP, AGIP,
ELF, STATOIL, SAGA, Norsk Hydro and Shell. This consortium
gathered into the PMSC, Project Management Steering
Committee, which took the following decisions with respect
to the project. In order to do "one step at a time",
the scope of the project was limited to:
- the data and energy protocols and not to develop
or test any hardware;
- electrical data and energy transmission, so optical
fibres for data communication and other means of transferring
power downhole are not investigated;
- protocols for the down hole instrumentation/environment
and the project will not formulate these for well
head or surface equipment.
The recommendations took into account as much as possible
the current practices for surface equipment and focussed
on compatibility rather than rigid standardisation.
Limiting constraints, which might limit new developments,
should be as flexible as possible. Besides the definition
of the requirements and specifications for a data and
power protocol, the service industry were open about
their plans and initiatives and also stated the importance
of a compatible way of transferring data and power from
the control pod downhole.
IWIS Completed
The IWIS Recommended Practice was finalised at the September 2007 workshop. This is now available to industry in support of ISO 13628 - 6.
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