Oil firms learn to move an ancient product with new-age tech

BP’s troubleshooters here received a call for help from colleagues in Azerbaijan. Sand was invading oil wells from the rocks outside. To avoid damage, the operators were choking the wells back, reducing revenues.

Two tech-savvy specialists, Prad Thiruvenkatanathan, a research scientist, and Tommy Langnes, a sand expert, came up with a novel fix. They used fiber-optic cable to gather the sounds coming from the wells deep in the earth. Inspired by apps like Shazam that recognize the voices of pop stars, they figured how to distinguish the sonic signature of sand from other sounds, like flowing oil. They also installed computers on the production platforms to sift staggering volumes of data coming from the wells down to manageable levels.

Using these tools, BP can identify where sand is coming in and patch the breaches instead of choking down the whole well. The flows from one well have already increased by nearly 50 percent, potentially a huge gain if the technology is rolled out through BP’s global network, where sand is a common problem. They are already using a similar tool to detect leaks and other potential hazards.

“It is just like your iPhone,” Mr. Langnes said. “We have built the phone. We have a couple of apps installed. Now the R&D team is working on new apps to install on the digital platform.”

The oil industry has long been of two minds when it comes to high technology. Oil companies like BP and Italy’s Eni use powerful supercomputers to crunch data from sound waves into images of petroleum deposits in the ground. Yet the industry has been resistant to change in other areas, like the process of producing oil.
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