The new Real-Time Compaction Imaging (RTCI) system incorporates fiber optics to monitor sand screen deformations and casing shape in real time.

The RTCI system was developed in response to the challenges of undetected deformation of completions, which can lead to costly workovers, loss of production, and potentially the loss of a well. This new technology provides fiber-optic distributed strain sensing of tubulars by incorporating thousands of Bragg grating sensors within a sand screen that is instrumented with optical fibers that are wrapped in a helical arrangement around the screen.

A successful RTCI trial on casing at Shell's Pinedale, Wyoming operations in 2008 was followed by a joint Shell/Baker Hughes test of the world's first sand-control completion integrated with the RTCI system at the Baker Hughes BETA test rig near Tulsa.

For more information, please visit: http://www.spe.org/jpt/2009/07/joint-development-yields-pioneering-imaging-system/