Application of streaming analytics for Artificial Lift systems: a human-in-the-loop approach for analysing clustered time-series data from progressive cavity pumps

Abstract

Assessing real-time performance of Artificial Lift Pumps is a prevalent time-series problem to tackle for natural gas operators in Eastern Australia. Multiple physics, data-driven, and hybrid approaches have been investigated to analyse or predict pump performance. However, these methods present a challenge in running compute-heavy algorithms on streaming time-series data. As there is limited research on novel approaches to tackle multivariate time-series analytics for Artificial Lift systems, this paper introduces a human-in-the-loop approach, where petroleum engineers label clustered time-series data to aid in streaming analytics. We rely on our recently developed novel approach of converting streaming time-series data into heatmap images to assist with real-time pump performance analytics. During this study, we were able to automate the labelling of streaming time-series data, which helped petroleum and well surveillance engineers better manage Artificial Lift Pumps through machine learning supported exception-based surveillance. The streaming analytics system developed as part of this research used historical time-series data from three hundred and fifty-nine (359) coal seam gas wells. The developed method is currently used by two natural gas operators, where the operators can accurately detect ten (10) performance-related events and five (5) anomalous events. This paper serves a two-fold purpose; first, we describe a step-by-step methodology that readers can use to reproduce the clustering method for multivariate time-series data. Second, we demonstrate how a human-in-the-loop approach adds value to the proposed method and achieves real-world results.