While advanced process control (APC) is typically a part of downstream oil and gas operations, closed-loop production optimization can also help upstream operations move toward autonomy. At the 2025 Honeywell User Group conference in San Antonio, Vineet Lasrado, global solutions leader of upstream oil and gas at Honeywell, discussed opportunities for APC on the upstream side.
“The ultimate goal of what we’re working on is moving toward autonomy,” Lasrado said. For upstream operations producing from the subsurface, this includes monitoring the reservoirs and wells producing oil, gas and water. Water may also be injected into the reservoir to manage pressure, and along with oil comes the associated gas, which needs to be reduced.
The specific composition will be very well-specific, where some produce high amounts of water while other wells, such as brand-new ones, produce lower amounts of water. Wells also vary in gas/oil ratio, and all these site-specific levels influence how the process can be optimized and what constraints affect those limits. There are also other outside factors that affect production.
“We are dealing with constraints at all points. On the gas side, as you are producing the associated gas, a higher amount of gas production might produce new constraints on compression,” Lasrado said. “If you have gas within the field, then you could have other constraints with respect to total amount of gas available to be injected in the well to optimize production.”
Persona-based constraints
In addition to production constraints, facilities also have different personnel with different objectives under different time scales. “What is interesting here is the different personas trying to solve the different pieces,” Lasrado said. For example, the reservoir engineer is looking at field development and long-term reservoir recovery. The production engineer is considering day-to-day optimization of production. The process engineers want to optimize the facility to ensure enough capacity in the process and avoid upsets. And operations is focused on the optimal day-to-day production.
Siloed organizations and disconnected decision-support systems can result in localized optimization, which hinders a fully maximized system. APC technology can help balance production to meet all the departments’ needs, as well as understand how they affect one another, including workflows between disciplines and better information sharing. Also, the performance of wells is managed by customers, who must share the important data to systems, in order to facilitate those operational decisions.
In addition to increasing throughput of high-value products and reducing process variability, autonomous production operations provide an opportunity to reduce operational expenses (OpEx). Lasrado said there are many levers to reduce OpEx, including, for example, processes that require compression or heat generation. “We look at this as the ability to capture data from various source systems to perform global optimizations,” Lasrado said.
The application of advanced source control processing is not new, but Honeywell has been on the forefront of deploying this technology, Lasrado said. However, the challenge on the upstream side is the variability of the wells and reservoirs. “You are dealing with Mother Nature,” Lasrado said. “That’s one of the reasons, I believe, why it has had some challenges.”
A big-picture view needed
One of the reasons for a lack of adoption for APC upstream is that customers need a dedicated team who can understand and maintain the models to get maximum value. “Many times APC is limited to maybe a set, maybe it might be limited just to a compressor or a gas condensate stabilization unit,” Lasrado said. “People are a bit more comfortable with that because they see proven results.” However, Honeywell does have customers who are using applications for closed loop control on wells, even on offshore platforms.
APC has also been used for end-to-end optimization of some basic upstream work processes, such as control and optimization of day-to-day production, including alarm management and well testing. “Well testing is one of the most basic processes in upstream, which is trying to understand how much oil, gas and water is being produced from each well,” Lasrado said. “Metering is a challenge in upstream because you are dealing with a mixed, multi-phase flow, and so you’re dealing with oil, gas and water.”
The other complicating factor for well testing is that it uses shared infrastructure, where one well test separator could be shared by six to eight wells. “Like a batch process, the wells are routed at different points in time to this test facility,” Lasrado said. This can be automated as a sequence of tasks, much like startup, shutdown or other transient operations.
“After you produce that data, then you’ve got what’s called the production back allocation and reconciliation process,” Lasrado said. From the physical metering and the point of sale of oil and gas, the system can account for the well’s production, and that information is fed back into well performance monitoring and then, modeling and optimizing the system.
“The closed loop production optimization that I am talking about very much requires your modeling systems to determine the optimal amount of oil, gas and water you can produce,” Lasrado said.
Finally, at the top level, APC can monitor day-to-day production versus the production target and perform well downtime analysis and improvement.
“The operator is trying to maintain production to a target, and there are a number of systems that need to help inform operations, working alongside engineering to determine what's the best operation on a given day or a given week,” Lasrado said. Upstream APC is essentially combining the two worlds of production optimization, which is typically run in the business network, with the control systems to enable a closed loop system optimizing production.
Edge servers could also help remote and offshore facilities move toward autonomous operations, making decisions about what should be the optimal set points for wells. “Customers are looking for systems that can autonomously decide, in case of any loss of connectivity or poor connectivity, how do I continuously produce from these wells?” Lasrado said.
Right now, this is still in the pilot phase with one customer, testing several wells on one platform. “The island of wells should be able to autonomously operate its production, even when it might be disconnected,” Lasrado said. “So that’s one example of how we are bringing intelligence to the edge.”
“Fundamentally, we want customers to accelerate, sustain and maximize production,” Lasrado said. APC can also minimize unplanned downtime, improve workforce efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs.
