Integration Story: RFID-Enabled Valves Promise To Maximize Oil Well Output

By Rhea Wessel, RFID Journal

For decades, drilling companies have experimented with various technologies to control tools that are part of oil and gas wells, employed thousands of meters beneath the surface. Many of these technologies, however, fail to work reliably considering the high pressure, corrosive environment and high temperatures within the wells.

Now, a Scottish company known as Petrowell has designed and patented a system that uses radio frequency identification to communicate wirelessly with valves and other downhole oil well tools. The system can help oil companies extract the maximum amount of oil and gas from fields, the company reports, by depleting the resources in a strategic way.

Typically, thanks to what is called directional drilling, an oil well can have both vertical and horizontal sections. A company bores down vertically, then turns its drill bit 90 degrees and digs horizontally from the lowest vertical point. A well may reach 3 to 4 kilometers (1.9 to 2.9 miles) in depth and 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in length. Fluids flow out of the well, but despite that outward and upward flow, businesses can also introduce fluids and small objects into a well's depths from the surface. Well operators often need to send acid down the hole to bore through rock, for instance. The construction of a well and the flow of fluids allow this to occur.

Used with permission from RFID Journal, Inc.