Real-Time Data Easily Shared for Oil Well Testing

PROS, a Professional, Reliable Oilfield Service company, provides third-party oil well testing services. This process involves bringing a trailer-mounted test vessel to the client’s well and running the production through it while monitoring and measuring the flow of oil, water, and gas. There are many test vessels distributed throughout the United States whose location changes once a week if not daily. Each vessel must be monitored for proper functionality as well as the collection of data. PROS needed a way to collect and store this data accurately and efficiently.

Tyrion Integration provided a cloud-hosted web application to provide real-time remote monitoring and control of each unit. This was accomplished with the use of Tyrion’s Nucleus and a combination of Ignition Gateways. Nucleus is a new device created by Tyrion Integration that takes the place of a cellular modem, PLC, industrial PC, and HMI.

Each well test unit is equipped with instrumentation both wired and wireless that is monitored and controlled by Nucleus. Nucleus collected data, controlled the instrumentation, and hosted an Ignition Gateway with about 50 tags. The gateway then connected over cellular to a cloud Ignition server which archived trends and well tests and provided real-time data via an MQTT connection. The cloud gateway utilized the Ignition WebDev Module to serve up a responsive web app to clients connecting via laptops, desktops, or mobile devices.

Because cellular service is not always guaranteed, the local gateway on each Nucleus stored its own records of trends and well tests on a local MySQL database and hosted its own instance of the web app. Users could pull up to the unit, connect to Nucleus’ wi-fi hotspot with their mobile device and then pull up the web app to monitor and control that unit. Once cellular service returned, all the data automatically synced to the cloud server.

The cloud Ignition Gateway served as the central access point for Internet clients to look at multiple test units. A cloud-hosted SQL database housed the trend data and well tests from all of the well test units. This data could be queried and manipulated via the web app. Data access is controlled via Ignition’s security features along with a user and group structure created for the project. The gateway also managed alarming and notifications via email and SMS.

The cloud gateway utilized the cloud database and MQTT to allow for the dynamic addition of well test units with no configuration done in the cloud. Each unit is designed to identify itself and provide a path to its data for the cloud web app.

As a result of this mobile solution, PROS now has greater process visibility. Managers from the office can look at the same real-time data as the operator in the field. Well test data is available immediately. And clients can see their well tests as they are happening rather than waiting a couple days as the results are tabulated. These abilities provide PROS with a service that is not offered by any of their competitors, which gave them a leg-up in the increasingly challenging oil industry.