Upgradable sensing systems for the oil and gas industry

Information from the reservoir can be used throughout its lifetime to make significant improvements to yield and operating costs. Traditional sensing methods, such as well logging using wireline techniques and installation of permanent gauges (both electronic and fibre optic sensors such as fibre Bragg grating sensors) either provide occasional snapshots of the reservoir or provide sensing systems which become dated and which usually do not survive over the lifetime of the reservoir. This paper reviews methods of instrumenting oil wells with sensing systems that can be upgraded throughout the lifetime of the reservoir. Applications shown include pressure sensors and distributed temperature sensing.