Oil Beam Pump and ESP Pump Monitoring

Oil companies generally have a need to know immediate status monitoring and longer term oil well condition monitoring. Such sites may be very remote oil pumps which are visited only occasionally by field teams. These may require a data collection and telemetry system to provide performance and status information on their operation to centrally located staff.

Application Detail

A typical remote oil beam pump installation would have a pump, a pump engine (diesel) and a pump controller. The pump controller typically would have a microprocessor based small RTU with a Modbus interface and there would be other interfaces, usually 4-20mA analog sensors for temperatures and pressures which are associated with the oil pump.
There are many different brands / types of oil pumps, for example there are beam pumps, jet pumps and electrically submersible pumps. All of these have some form of pump / engine controller. Some have individual sensors typically 4-20mA analog inputs and some have more complex Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) controllers with Modbus interfaces. Some also have control outputs, for example a control output to force a pump shutdown in an emergency.

Unidata has worked with Weatherford EPIC, Lufkin SAM and smaller providers of such systems. All of these have Modbus parameters which can be collected and monitored remotely, and there are limited control functions available, especially a shutdown function, which are possible across a telemetry link.

There may also be requirements to monitor older pumps without sophisticated controller systems. In these circumstances individual sensors can be attached, pressure sensors, temperature sensors and the like may need to be measured. Other local conditions, for example fuel levels, voltages, temperatures may also need to be monitored. These can be attached to analog and digital inputs of a Neon Remote Terminal to be routinely measured and reported on. Perhaps there is an electrically submersible pump that needs to be monitored. This could be accomplished by adding a clamp on current transformer to the pump power supply, so the power input can be monitored, across three phases, and determine the pump load and pump condition.
The Neon Remote Terminals / Modules can be set up to monitor the analog and digital sensors and to Modbus inputs and store readings and operating parameters locally. In most cases, the data is sent on a regular (5,10 or 15 minutes) basis to a central Neon Server to be viewed on a web browser, and sent to associated systems within an organization responsible for managing the oil pumps.