NEL is investing GBP 400,000 to develop a state-of-the-art flow meter data capture and analysis system.

The joint project between NEL, Robert Gordon University (RGU) and The Data Lab, a Scottish government funded innovation centre, will upgrade NEL’s data acquisition infrastructure system, enabling data across 30 years to be analysed for the first time.

The combined data science expertise of RGU and NEL’s flow measurement capability will develop state-of-the-art data mining software tools to monitor on-going performance and trends. These intelligent meter health checks will save operators billions of pounds per year from unnecessary calibrations, maintenance and shutdowns.

The new system will enable greater scrutiny of NEL’s valuable archive to more intelligently analyse a much larger array of data available from devices, and to pick up on historical performance trends, supporting the oil & gas industry in its quest to move away from time-based flow meter calibrations, to a risk or condition-based model.

Muir Porter, NEL’s Group Manager, says, “This is an industry-first that will deliver operators the ability to analyse data on very large complex data sets to better inform decisions that have huge potential for cost optimisation. NEL is the UK’s National Measurement Institute, responsible for maintaining the flow measurement national standard. By delivering this unique capability, we will also be able to feed into high-impact industry research and guidance going forward.”

John McCall, Director, Smart Data Technologies Centre, Robert Gordon University, says, “Our data science knowledge, combined with NEL’s flow metrology expertise, creates the opportunity to analyse data in a novel way, enabling us to provide previously unobtainable insights. We will uncover hidden data trends and relationships that will help operators to better understand and predict the condition of their meters, allowing them to minimise operational costs and maximise well revenues.”

Tags: NEL, Robert Gordon University (RGU), The Data Lab