The shale revolution has ushered in new types of production challenges, ranging from fracture-driven well interactions to upsized operational scales and prototypical steep declines. To meet these challenges, state-of-the-art automation and optimization are being honed by continuous advancements in digital sensors, remote terminal units for wellsite control and physics-based diagnostics software. An initial pilot project on a group of 100 rod lift wells is demonstrating the next evolutionary step of fully autonomous well control. Innovation is the key to enable operators to optimize production on a sustained basis on individual wells, let alone across a pad or field.
