Production Engineering Simplified with AI-based Advisory Systems.

A production engineer plays a crucial role in oil and gas operations, responsible for safely delivering on production target while ensuring reliable and cost-effective operations. This involves oversight and optimisation of an integrated production system; not just each individual wellsite, but often a network of tens or hundreds of wells. This responsibility involves bridging the uncertainties of subsurface conditions and reservoir inflow, with the tangible elements both in-wellbore and at surface.

At any time, the production system may be subject to change. As a result, it's important that engineers can efficiently identify where there are any events or anomalies that can impact reliability or run life, as well as be able to act on opportunities to optimise reliability and production. In both cases it's not enough to just to be able to identify at the time these conditions are occurring, but how to anticipate or predict them ahead of time and additionally be able to act and prevent them (in the case of adverse events) well in advance.

To enable efficient identification and prioritisation of production engineering time, AI-based advisory systems can be used. These are software applications that leverage AI/ML modelling techniques to analyse well trends and predict upcoming conditions, and then integrate these models into the decision-making processes of an engineering discipline.

At SIG Machine Learning, we help teams implement and apply these AI-based advisory systems, making it easier to manage, optimise and control their assets. For production engineers, we have developed SmartLift™, a dedicated system to support in wellsite and gathering optimisation.

SmartLift™, generates setpoint recommendations on a defined schedule (e.g. once per day), to help engineers identify, act on and even automate routine optimisation tasks each morning. This solution is now being used not only for advisory support, but has transitioned into an automated intelligent field controller for the oil & gas industry, autonomously operating well fields over one thousand wells in size.

Meet “Jonathan”: Production Engineer for the ‘Optimus Field’.

Jonathan is a field-experienced production engineer with over a decade in upstream operations. He’s worked across reservoir, production and D&C teams, and knows first-hand how fast things can go off-track if you’re not able to have oversight of operations, and insight into real-time conditions.

Today, he oversees a network of artificial lift wellsites - many ageing, most temperamental and as unique as a fingerprint. As a result Jonathan and his team are often battling production instability, troubleshooting and intervening on failures, and adjusting controller settings when time permits.

It would seem that the Optimus Field is a prime candidate for AI-based advisory support.

Jonathan, Meet SmartLift™

When SmartLift™ was added to his toolkit, Jonathan didn’t know what to expect but he does know that he has limited time to even think about using any different tools. He needs simple, he needs easy. There is enough operational complexity without the technology to manage it being complicated or slow to use.

But within weeks of using SmartLift™, the results were hard to ignore:

• It fit into how his team already worked.

  SmartLift™ mirrored his existing well trending tools, even his preferred colours. The key difference was it also displayed the range of new insights and advisory support, aligned over time with the trends, to help him work through his surveillance by exception workflows 2-3 times faster.

  
  

• It flagged issues before they escalated.

  Instead of dialling the phone to field operators to troubleshoot an underperforming downhole pump, he’s beginning to identify issues earlier, often before they escalate and impact pump efficiency and well performance.

  
  

• Setpoint tuning was reduced by a staggering 95%.

  SmartLift™ does not require the same manual tuning parameters as the previous, traditional wellsite controller, which is proving to save valuable time. Jonathan wasn’t even aware the control systems and surveillance processes could both be streamlined with upgraded technology.

  
  

• Less tools to work across, more time delivering value.

  Instead of digging through SCADA logs or exporting trends to see the full picture, Jonathan and his team could review real-time trends, advisory support, and operational activities in one structured interface. This helped reduce from three different tools (historian, SCADA screen and completion data dashboard) into a single screen. Same data, but preprocessed and integrated to help improve efficiency at every turn.

  
  

• More wells, less manual effort.

  Instead of managing only the top 5–10% of wells, Jonathan could oversee optimisation across more wells. With surveillance and optimisation now taking a third of the time, he’s able to drive a significantly greater impact. Preventing even one failure a week, Jonathan would save millions in unnecessary operational costs. SmartLift™ enables engineers to log their findings in an efficient manner, to share the biggest wins at the next team meeting.

  
  

• He stayed in control. Just with better context.

  Even with wells running in an automated advisory mode, only small scale changes get made on a day-to-day basis. This provides significant benefit at scale, to preprocess and test well conditions on defined cycles, it helps engineers stay on top of well optimisation without losing control of how they want to run their field.

The Results

Six months in, SmartLift™ had delivered:

• A 70% reduction in manual effort in well surveillance and optimisation

• Fewer unplanned interventions and downhole failures

• More consistent, stable production across well fields

• A production uplift between 1–3%

• Reduced energy use and carbon emissions from daily operations from rationalised pump speeds and reduced intervention activities

Drive Impact Like Jonathan

AI-based advisory systems help you drive more impact, in less time.

Leveraging these systems to optimise and, where needed, automate the decision-making process for wellsite network optimisation, offers substantial benefits in field performance and operational efficiency.

If you’re in a production team that is managing dozens — or hundreds — of oil & gas wells, SmartLift™ delivers the solution to help you with greater foresight and automation in operations. Built using AI, grounded in engineering logic, and now proven at scale and available for demonstration.

👉 Is SmartLift™ right for your operations?

Book a session with us to learn more today →