Petrobras will use a digital twin to optimize oil production and flow

The Cidade de Anchieta and P-57 FPSO platforms, operating in the Jubarte field in the Espírito Santo state’s pre-salt and post-salt layers, participated in the pilot project that demonstrated the effectiveness of the tool. This digital twin can increase production by roughly 1%. After two years of tests, the technology developed by the Brazilian company ESSS, based in Florianópolis (Santa Catarina), was validated and is ready for use.

According to Petrobras’s Exploitation and Production Director Sylvia Anjos, “the Lift and Flow Digital Twin technology can be used in all Petrobras’s offshore production and injection wells. We’ll start using the tools in maritime wells of other units no later than this year.”

This technology provides real-time production system data, boosting the lift and flow process, which corresponds to carrying the oil produced from the bottom of the wells to the production platforms. The digital twin can also preempt incidents that may compromise production and enable solution virtual testing.

“Petrobras devised a Digital Twin prototype that formed the basis to specify the technology. This preliminary solution was born in the Espírito Santo Business Unit (UN-ES). We needed to develop a similar but more robust, commercial, sustained, and scalable system for the company’s offshore wells,” explains Renata Baruzzi, the Engineering, Technology, and Innovation Engineer.

The product results from a contract-type Technological Order (ETEC) that requires the solution to a real problem for which a commercial solution doesn’t exist yet. In such events, we will select the company demonstrating the best way to minimize technological risks. The rule is published in a public notice that needs to be strictly obeyed.