Episode 308: Low Cost Monitoring Without Low Value
“The goal is not cheaper data. The goal is to spend less on everything that does not add value to the decision one is trying to make.”
Low-cost monitoring is becoming less about cheaper sensors and more about designing geophysics around the decision that needs to be made.
Guest editors Erkan Ay and Joël Le Calvez use the The Leading Edge special section, "Low-cost monitoring for oil and gas production and emerging energies" to show what that looks like in practice, from DAS that makes fracture monitoring viable without a dedicated monitoring well to targeted measurements that act as an early-warning system.
Their argument is especially relevant in a tight-budget environment. Monitoring can become more routine and accessible, but only if geophysicists measure the right physics, automate intelligently, and remember that data itself is not the product. Decisions are.