Well monitoring by means of distributed sensing means

Abstract

This application describes methods and apparatus for downhole monitoring in real-time. The method involves interrogating an unmodified optic fiber (102) arranged along the path of a well bore (106) to provide a distributed acoustic sensor and sampling data gathered from a plurality of sensing portions of the fiber. The sampled data is then processed to provide a real-time indication of the acoustic signals detected by the sensing portions of the fiber. The real-time indication provides information to an operator or controller of the downwell process with real-time feedback data regarding what is happening during the downwell process which allows the identification of any problems and adjustment of the process parameters.

Claims

1. A method of monitoring a downhole process comprising: repeatedly interrogating an optic fibre arranged along the path of a well bore to provide distributed acoustic sensing; sampling data gathered from a plurality of longitudinal portions of said fibre; processing said data to provide a real-time indication of the acoustic signals detected by at least one longitudinal sensing portion of said fibre; and adjusting interrogation parameters to vary the portions of fibre from which data is sampled in response to said acoustic signals detected.

2. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the said optic fibre is arranged in the well bore in which said downhole process is being performed.

3. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said real-time indication comprises an audible signal representing the acoustic signals detected by at least one longitudinal portion of fibre in the vicinity of the downhole process.

4. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said real-time indication comprises an indication of the intensity of acoustic signals detected by at least one longitudinal sensing portion of fibre in the vicinity of the downhole process.

5. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said step of processing said data comprises performing frequency analysis.

6. A method as claimed in claim 5 wherein said real-time indication comprises an indication of the frequency of acoustic signals detected by at least one longitudinal portion of fibre in the vicinity of the downhole process.

7. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the step of processing said data comprises analysing the data to detect an event of interest and said real-time indication comprises an indication that said event has been detected.

8. A method as claimed in claim 7 wherein said step of analysing said data comprises analysing the data for at least one predefined acoustic characteristic.

9. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said downhole process comprises one of: perforation charge placement; perforation charge firing; hydraulic fracturing; tool deployment; drilling of plugs; and production flow.

10. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the steps of interrogating the fibre, sampling data and processing data comprise launching a series of optical pulses into said fibre and detecting radiation Rayleigh backscattered by the fibre; and processing the detected Rayleigh backscattered radiation to provide a plurality of discrete longitudinal sensing portions of the fibre.

11. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said optic fibre is single mode fibre which is, absent of any external stimulus, free of any substantial change of optical properties along its length.

12. A method as claimed in claim 1 where the longitudinal sensing portions of fibre are 10 m or less in length.

13. A method according to claim 1 wherein said sampling is performed at a sampling rate greater than or equal to 5 kHz.

14. A method according to claim 1, wherein at least 250 channels are sampled simultaneously.

15. A method of controlling a downhole process comprising: performing said downhole process; monitoring said downhole process using the method as claimed in any preceding claim; and adjusting the operation of said process as appropriate in response to said real-time indication.

16. A method as claimed in claim 15 wherein said method comprises automatically adjusting at least one parameter of said downhole process in response to said real-time indication.

17. A non-transitory computer program product which, when run on a suitably programmed computer connected to or embodied within a controller for an optical interrogator or a downhole fibre optic, performs the method of claim 1.

18. A system for monitoring a downhole process, said system comprising: a fibre optic interrogator adapted to repeatedly interrogate an optic fibre arranged along the path of a well bore to provide distributed acoustic sensing; a sampler arranged to sample a plurality of channels output from said interrogator to provide real-time acoustic data from a plurality of longitudinal portions of said fibre; and an interface device configured to output a real-time indication of the acoustic signals detected by at least one longitudinal sensing portion of said fibre wherein said fibre optic interrogator is configured to adjust the interrogation parameters to vary the portions of fibre from which data is sampled in response to said real time acoustic signal detected.

19. A system according to claim 18 wherein said interface device comprises an audio device for producing an audible signal based on the acoustic signals detected by at least one longitudinal portion of fibre in the vicinity of the downhole process.

20. A system according to claim 18 wherein said interface device comprises a display device and wherein said wherein said real-time indication comprises an indication of the intensity of acoustic signals detected by at least one longitudinal sensing portion of fibre in the vicinity of the downhole process.

21. A system for controlling a downhole process comprising: a controller for controlling process parameters; and a monitoring system as claimed in claim 18; wherein said controller is responsive to said real-time indication generated by said monitoring system to control said process parameters.

Description

DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

(1) Preferred features of the present invention will now be described, purely by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

(2) FIG. 1 shows apparatus for monitoring a well using DAS;

(3) FIG. 2 illustrates the output of the system of FIG. 1;

(4) FIG. 3 is a schematic representation of a perforation event as monitored by an embodiment of the present invention;

(5) FIG. 4 illustrates seismic detection and parameterisation steps for fracture monitoring;

(6) FIG. 5 shows the results of inflow monitoring having been enhanced using variance statistics,

(7) FIG. 6 illustrates an embodiment of an interrogator; and

(8) FIG. 7 shows an example of a histogram type plot of real-time indication of detected acoustic signals.

DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

(9) A fibre optic cable 102 is included along the path of a well, which in the present example is a gas well, and may be on or offshore. The well is formed at least in part by a metallic production casing 104 inserted into a bore hole 106, with the space between the outer wall of the casing and the hole being back filled with cement 108 in the present example. The production casing may be formed of multiple sections joined together, and in certain instances the sections will have different diameters. In this way the casing diameter is able to narrow gradually towards the bottom of the well. As can be seen in FIG. 1, in this example the fibre passes through the cement back fill, and is in fact clamped to the exterior of the metallic casing. It has been found that an optical fibre which is constrained, for instance in this instance by passing through the cement back fill, exhibits a different acoustic response to certain events to a fibre which is unconstrained. An optical fibre which is constrained may give a better response than one which is unconstrained and thus it may be beneficial to ensure that the fibre in constrained by the cement. The difference in response between and constrained and unconstrained fibre may also be used as an indicator of damage to the cement which can be advantageous will be described later.

(10) The fibre protrudes from the well head and is connected to interrogator/processor unit 112. The interrogator unit injects light into the fibre and senses radiation backscattered from along the length of the fibre. The particular form of the input light and sampling/processing capability of the unit allows simultaneous output of multiple data channels, each channel corresponding to acoustic data sensed along a particular section of the fibre at a particular distance along the fibre. While the interrogator/processor unit is shown here as a single item, hardware may be divided among, for example, an interrogator box providing a raw data output, feeding a PC or portable computer to provide the data processing capability.

(11) FIG. 6 illustrates the operation of interrogator unit 112. A laser module 601 is optically coupled to the optic fibre 102 by a suitable optical coupling means (not shown). The laser module transmits optical pulses of a defined duration and frequency into the fibre, for instance as described in GB2442745, pairs of pulses having a defined frequency difference may be transmitted into the fibre. Backscattered radiation is coupled to a photodetector module 602 which detects radiation which has been Rayleigh backscattered within the fibre. As taught in GB2442745 radiation at the frequency difference of the transmitted pulses may be detected.

(12) The data from the photodetector module 602 may be passed to a filter module 603 which may filter the data for the acoustic frequencies of interest. Filter module 603 may, for example, comprise a high pass filter. The data may then be passed to an FFT module 604 for performing an FFT, prior to being passed to a processor module 605 for generating the real-time indication.

(13) Using commercially available components in such an interrogator it is possible to provide an indication of the acoustic disturbances (which include, for the purposes of this specification, any type of mechanical vibration or disturbances such as pressure and seismic waves) encountered from each of at least 4000 separate channels in real-time. However in some applications data may only be of interest from a subset of all available channels of the fibre. Therefore the interrogator may be arranged to process data from the relevant channels only. This may reduce the amount of processing required and thus reduce any processing delays.

(14) When the apparatus is arranged to provide a real-time indication of the acoustic signals to an operator or controller of a process the real-time indication provided may be visible, via a display device 607, or audible, via an audio device 606, or both and may, for instance, be provided to a control room or via a mobile device at a control station.

(15) An example of the type of possible data output from the arrangement of FIGS. 1 and 6 is shown in FIG. 2. Here channel (longitudinal sensing portion) number (and hence depth for substantially vertical wells) is displayed along the y axis, with zero representing the channel nearest the surface. 400 channels are shown. Time is displayed along the x axis, to provide a waterfall plot which is continuously refreshed as new data is made available. Detected energy intensity is shown as colour or greyscale in the upper plot 202, using a scale shown on the right hand side to provide a 2D visualisation of the acoustic energy distribution along the entire sensed length of the fibre at each of a series of time instants.

(16) This type of waterfall plot can allow an operator to see at a glance where there is significant acoustic activity within the well bore. It also will provide a clear indication of any significant changes in acoustic disturbances. For example consider that the whole well is relatively quiet and experiencing background noise only. A sustained increase in acoustic activity from one of more channels will show up by a change of colour against the relatively quiet background. This in itself will be useful information that something has changed. If the increased disturbance continues, and at the same location, the waterfall plot will start to show a horizontal line of increased activity. If however the location of the disturbance moves then the relevant channels affected will also change and there waterfall plot be show an inclined line. If there is a sudden event which affects several channels but then stops there will be a vertical line. The waterfall plot therefore provides a very useful visual indication of the acoustic events happening down the well.

(17) Depending on the depth of the well and the size of the acoustic channels it may not be possible to display each channel individually on a plot for the whole extent of the well. For instance a well bore 5 km long, interrogated with channels of 2 m length say would produce 2500 separate channels. When displaying the whole extent of the well the channels may be grouped together and the average intensity of disturbances displayed. However an operator may be able to select any section of well and see a finer resolution waterfall plot for the area, eventually down to a waterfall plot showing individual channels.

(18) As well as displaying the general acoustic intensity detected it may be useful in some instances to detect transient acoustic events, especially for processes such as perforation and fracturing. It may also be useful to perform some frequency analysis. The central plot 204 shown in FIG. 2 shows the same data after undergoing transient detection (as will be explained in greater detail below) and the lower plot 206 shows the frequency of the detected transients according to the scale to the right of the plot. In the middle 204 and lower plots 206, depth from 0 to 4000 m is represented on the y axis, with time from 0 to 10000 s on the x axis. The arrangement is such that data is available from all channels at every sample period, although, as mentioned, an operator may select one or more subsets of channels for display and/or the data processor may automatically display a subset of interest in response to certain conditions.

(19) In addition to a waterfall type plot it may be useful for the real-time indication to comprise a histogram type plot such as shown in FIG. 7. A histogram type plot can be used to display the intensity of each channel or, depending on the scale of display, the average intensity of groups of channels. Alternatively the same arrangement may be used to display the frequency of each channel or groups of channels. In some arrangements the histogram may be limited to showing the intensity at a particular acoustic frequency or frequency range or alternatively the frequency of signals within a certain intensity range.

(20) Referring to the example plot 701 shown in FIG. 7 it can clearly be seen that the channels in area 702 are exhibiting a greater intensity that the ambient noise levels detected by most of the other channels. Further the channels in area 703 are also experiencing acoustic disturbances. Were such a plot obtained during a process being conducted in area 702, such as fracturing, this could be an indication that something unexpected was occurring in area 703 and be indicative of a problem. However if a process were expected to result in a disturbance in both areas 702 and 703, such as inflow from separate perforation sites, the relative difference in intensity could indicate uneven conditions. For instance a sand screen at location 703 could be mostly blocked.

(21) It will therefore be clear that providing these types of real time visual indication can provide actual feedback of what is currently happening down the well when the process is being performed.

(22) In addition to providing a visible display, for instance in a control room or the like, a particular acoustic channel may be selected for audible playback. In other words the operator can get to listen to the signals detected by a particular section of fibre. In essence the relevant section of fibre acts as a microphone. The ability to listen, in real time, to signals at a section of well deep underground during various well processes is believed to be novel. By listening to the signals detected the operator can get a feel for the process and how is it progressing. By swapping between various channels at different locations of a process which is occurring at various sites the operator can determine whether there are any significant differences at the various sites and/or whether any changes to the process parameters have had any significant effect.

(23) For example during the process of drilling out blanking plugs the drill operator may listen to the channels near to the drill. The acoustic channel can track the drills progress down the well, either automatically or by operator selection. When the drill encounters the blanking plug the sound of the drilling operation can be relayed to the operator who will then have some indication of how the drilling process is going and who may be able to adjust the drill operation accordingly.

(24) In addition to providing the audible and/or visual feedback regarding the acoustic signals detected during the downhole process the acoustic signals from some or all sensing portions of the sensing fibre may be analysed for signals which are characteristic of an event of interest. As the skilled person will be aware acoustic signatures analysis may be performed to detect acoustic signatures which are representative of some specified events. The acoustic signature analysis may comprise analysing the evolution of the signal from a longitudinal sensing portion of the fibre against a known signature. In some embodiments the signals from more than one adjacent sensing portion of fibre may be analysed together to detect a particular characteristic. If a characteristic of an event of interest is detected then an alarm or alert may be generate for an operator.

(25) Whilst the discussion above has focussed on providing feedback to a human operator in some embodiments the real-time indication may be used to automatically control at least some parameters of the downhole process. Referring back to FIG. 6 the processor module 605 may be arranged to provide the real-time indication to a control unit 608 for controlling at least one aspect of the downhole process. The controller 608 may simply be a cut-off or emergency stop type unit for halting the process if a problem is detected but in other embodiments the controller adjusts parameters of the process in use and the real-time indication from processor module 605 is used in a feedback loop.

(26) In some embodiments the characteristics of the interrogation may be changed in response to the real-time data processor module 605 may provide a control signal to laser module 601. For example, during flow monitoring when the well is in use the channels may be a first size, say 20 m for example, and all channels of the well bore (say 250 for a 5 km well) may be analysed. If a significant change is detected in any channel the size of the channels may be reduced, for instance to 1 m or so and the 250 channels in the vicinity of the event analysed to give a finer resolution.

(27) It is proposed to use the system described above to monitor various downhole process including apparatus placement, perforation charge firing, fracturing, blanking plug drilling and fluid flow for example. In addition the system may provide general condition monitoring and, in some arrangements, may also allow communication with downhole sensors

(28) Apparatus Location

(29) The method may comprise using a DAS sensor to monitor the process of locating apparatus within the well bore, for instance for correct deployment of a blanking plug, a measurement or other tool or for correct location of perforation charges.

(30) In vertical wells the tool may be lowered into the well until a certain length of cable has been deployed and the amount of cable used as a measure of the position in the well. In wells with horizontal sections a tractor device may have to be deployed in the well to move the apparatus into position. Again a length of cable attached to the apparatus may be used to determine the location.

(31) By monitoring deployment of the apparatus the location may be independently provided by noting the acoustic disturbances caused by the deployment of the apparatus, i.e. detecting the sounds made by the apparatus banging against the walls of the casing for instance or the sound made by the tractor unit on the casing. These disturbances can be detected as relatively intense events occurring in particular sensing portion of the fibre, with the relevant sensing portion of the fibre providing another way of determining the position of the tool. A tractor device may also be detectable at a characteristic frequency associated with the power unit for example.

(32) The progress of the apparatus could therefore be monitored on an appropriate waterfall diagram for the relevant section of well and the deployment stopped when the desired location is reached.

(33) Perforation Charge Firing

(34) In one embodiment of the present invention a DAS sensor is used to monitor the perforation events. Monitoring the perforation event can serve at least two distinct purposes. Firstly the location of the perforation can be determined. It can be difficult to control exactly the direction of the perforation in a borehole and so detecting the location of the perforation can aid in control and planning of further perforations. Also the acoustic signature of the perforation event may be compared to certain expected characteristics to determine whether the perforation occurred satisfactorily. A string of perforation charges may be located in a particular section of well and fired in a sequence. By providing real-time feedback regarding the acoustic disturbances when one or more perforation charges are fired the operator of the perforation firing may be able to adjust the location of the next charge, fire a different type of charge, halt the perforation process to deal with a problem or have satisfactory feedback that the process should be continued as planned. The ability to detect perforation type events will be described later.

(35) In addition to monitoring the perforation itself the perforation event is a relatively high energy event which acoustically excites a large proportion of the well bore, i.e. the casing, the cement, any blanking plugs already in place etc. The acoustic response to a perforation event allows an acoustic profile of the well bore to be collected and assessed.

(36) Acoustic data is sampled at between 0.2 Hz and 20 kHz over the length of the drilled hole during a perforation event. The energy present in each channel is monitored by either a bandpass filter and then an rms energy calculation, or by performing an FFT and summing power between an upper and lower frequency band (typically 512 pt FFT, 50% overlapped, filtered between 300 and 5 kHz if sampling rate is practical). A 2D data array of detected energy for time and depth (or position) can be produced.

(37) Further processing of the data array by identifying peaks reveals that the impulsive perforation signal propagates up and down the well casing as well as into the rock. An energy plot as described above can therefore be produced, and a trace can be identified tracking the progress of the pulse as shown in FIG. 3.

(38) The gradient of the identifiable trace can be measured, as it is the rate at which the energy is propagating through the well casing. This gives a measure of the transmission speed in the medium. This can be used to indicate areas of the well casing that are different because their transmission speed changes. This could indicate a problem with the casing attachment, or structural issues in the casing itself.

(39) An automated tracking algorithm could be used to calculate the speed of this energy trace and determine areas where the speed changes.

(40) The proposed algorithm would work on the assumption that the event of interest is much larger than the normal state of the well, so that the peak in energy identified as the perforation event can be reliably identified. Then the peak can be associated over successive time frames, and the average speed over 1, 2, 3, . . . 10 s can be calculated. Further improvements could track multiple peaks at the same time (useful for distinguishing the main pulse in the case of multiple reflections).

(41) Further inspection of FIG. 3 shows clear points of reflection of energy. These arise at joins in the casing and can provide an engineer with information concerning the quality of the joins across the length of the casing. Anywhere there is a significant mismatch in material, a partial reflection may occur, and the larger the mismatch, the greater is the reflection coefficient. Other material failures such as cracks or pitting could significantly affect the propagation of the energy along the casing and fibre, and may be identified using this method.

(42) For instance the condition of the cement surrounding the casing may be assessed. The acoustic response of the cement may vary in areas where there is a significant void in the cement, either due to manufacturing as the result of an earlier perforation or fracturing event. Voids in the cement can be problematic because if a subsequent perforation occurs in an area of void when the proppant is pumped into the well bore it may not flow into the perforations in the rock but into the voidwasting a large amount of proppant and halting well formation whilst the problem is addressed.

(43) As mentioned above the response of an unconstrained fibre is different to that of a constrained fibre and thus if the fibre does itself pass through a void in the cement, and thus is unconstrained in that area, the acoustic response will be very different. Thus the present invention may include detecting voids in the cement surrounding the casing.

(44) The positioning and condition of blanking plugs can also be assessed in this way.

(45) Fracture Monitoring

(46) Once the perforations have been made the fluid and proppant is flowed into the well to cause fracturing. The acoustic responses of the acoustic channels of fibre in the vicinity of the perforations may be monitored. Flow of the high pressure fluid containing a solid particulate through the casing 104 creates lots of acoustic disturbance and all channels of the fibre that correspond to sections of the well bore in which flow is occurring will generate show an acoustic response. However it has been found that the acoustic channels in the vicinity of the perforation sites exhibit an acoustic response which is related to the flow of fracture fluid into the perforation site and the fracturing occurring. The acoustic energy of the channels of the fibre in the vicinity of the fracturing sites may therefore be displayed to an operator of the fracturing process, for instance in a waterfall and/or histogram type plot.

(47) It has also been found that this response can be seen most markedly by looking at discrete frequency bands of the acoustic disturbances. The signal returns may therefore be processed in a number of different frequency bands and displayed to an operator, either simultaneously (e.g. in different graphs or overlaid curves of different colours) or sequentially or as selected by the user. The data may also be processed to automatically detect the spectral band that provided the greatest difference between the intensity at channels in the vicinity of the perforation site and channels at other sections of the well.

(48) By displaying such a graphical representation to an operator in real time the operator receives information that allows him the see how the fracture process is progressing and if there are any problems with the fracture process. The value of intensity and/or frequency of the acoustic signal corresponding to fracture fluid flowing into a perforation site and causing fracturing may also be analysed to determine some parameters about the fractures, such as general size of the fractures and/or rate of fracturing.

(49) In addition to providing a visible display a particular acoustic channel may be selected for audible playback. By listening to the signals detected the operator can get a feel for the fracturing process and how is it progressing. By swapping between the channels associated with the various fracture sites the operator can determine himself whether there are any significant differences in fracturing at the various perforation sites and/or whether changes to the flow parameters have had any significant effect.

(50) As mentioned above in some instance the fracture fluid may not flow into the rock and proppant wash-out may occur. The flow of proppant fluid in normal operation will generally proceed at a certain rate and with a certain characteristic. If the fluid finds another path or ceases to fracture correctly the flow conditions within the well may change. The acoustic response during proppant fluid flow may therefore be monitored to detect any significant change. If a different part of the casing fails this may be apparent by the sudden appearance of a signal at a different part of the well bore. Detection of such a component may be used to generate a real time alarm to an operator.

(51) Further seismic and fracture events of interest are of a distinctly different nature from the continuous flow noise caused by the high pressure influx of water and sand during the fracturing process. Generally they are characterised by being short and impulsive eventshereafter referred to as transient events. A technique looking at short term variations away from the mean variable levels (the transient detector) will extract these events from background and long period noise. The general processing method is set out in FIG. 4.

(52) By processing the acoustic data received to highlight transient events in this way, a fracture event can be detected and observed, and the following parameters can be determined: The depth at which fracture is occurring can be determined according to the channel at which fracture events are detected. The rate at which fractures are occurring, or fracture density, can be determined according to the number and/or intensity of detected fractures over a defined period or depth range. A measure of fracture magnitude can be determined according to the measured duration of a fracture, and also the span of a fracture defined as the number of channels affected by a single event. An estimate of range from the well can be made based on the frequency characteristics of a fracture event. To provide a single parameter for frequency, the mean frequency of the spectral shape of the event can be used. Other frequency parameters which can be determined include second order statistics such as skew and kurtosis.

(53) In order to identify transients among other background data a measure of short term variability is compared with the normal or an average variability for a given channel.

(54) In the present example this is achieved by populating statistics representing the mean energy and the mean absolute deviation about the mean (MAD: mean of absolute difference of current value and mean value).

(55) These two statistics are updated by exponential averaging as each data update is received, using a decay term, N.
Mean data=((N1)/N)*mean data+(1/N)*new Data
MAD=((N1)/N)*MAD data+(1/N)*abs(new Data-mean data)

(56) Where the data first undergoes an FFT and where calculations are performed per channel and per frequency cell.

(57) The transient level is then defined as:
Abs|new datamean data|/MAD

(58) This gives a value relating to how much a particular frequency cell is higher in variability than its average variability. Hence very variable channels are self regulating and it is only excessive and unusual variability that is detected. By varying the values of N the algorithm can be tuned to detect different length transient events. Typically factors of 4, 6, 8, . . . 128 are used but these depend on the length of the transient required and the FFT rate of the system. By performing this process in the frequency domain, a high degree of control is achieved over the frequencies used to form a transient event, and knowledge of the transient spectral structure is calculated and preserved for feature extraction.

(59) The algorithm adaptively selects an exponential factor according to whether a transient is triggered. When recalculating the mean and medium values, if a frequency cell is above threshold as a detection it will use a different value for N (in this example 100 N is used) meaning that the transient event is included in the general statistics at a much reduced rate compared with the normal events.

(60) The location of fracture events may also be monitored to allow fracture mapping or fracture density mapping. In a typical production environment there may be several wells in the same oil or gas field. Ideally each well taps a different part of the field. However, it is possible for the fractures created in one well to run into the same area as the fractures from another well. In this instance the new well may not increase production as any production at the new well decrease production at the old well. It is therefore desirable to monitor the location of fractures. The use of a DAS system offers the ability to detect and monitor where the fracture event are occurring in real time, thus allow control over the fracturing process.

(61) It has surprisingly been found that DAS systems may be used to separately detect P and S waves. P waves (pressure or primary waves) are longitudinal waves which propagate through solid material. S waves are shear waves or secondary waves which are transverse waves. Co-pending patent application PCT/GB2009/002055, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference thereto, describes how a DAS system can be used to detect P and S waves and discriminate between them. Detecting the S waves of the fracture event may allow the location to be determined. To determine the location of the fracture event multiple fibres and/or time of arrival type techniques may be used as described in co-pending application no. GB0919904.3, the contents of which is hereby incorporated by reference thereto.

(62) Further it will be noted that the S wave, being a transverse wave, will have a shear direction associated with the wave. Detection of the different components of the S wave will allow a determination of the orientation of the fracture. This is particularly useful as fractures in the horizontal plane are not preferred as the injected sand is generally insufficient to keep the fracture open given the weight of rock above. A vertical fracture is thus preferred. To detect the orientation of the S wave the incoming wave may be resolved into components in three dimensions. By arranging one or more sensing fibres in three dimensions the components of the incident wave may be resolved. The use of a fibre optic which preferentially responds in one direction may help resolve an incident acoustic wave into its components, as described in co-pending application GB0919902.7, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference thereto.

(63) Blanking Plug Drilling

(64) After all perforation and fracturing steps are completed it is necessary to drill out the blanking plugs that were inserted to block off sections of the well. The monitoring method may be used to guide the drill to location of the blanking plug (the location of the blanking plugs may have been determined during a perforation event as described earlier) and to monitor the drilling process. During drilling an audible signal from a channel located at the blanking plug may be played audibly to the drill operator for real-time feedback as to how the drilling is going. Other channels may also be monitored for acoustic disturbances that may indicate failure of the well.

(65) Inflow Monitoring

(66) The monitoring of fluid such as oil and gas flowing into a well from neighbouring rock formations typically requires much greater sensitivity than any of the previous techniques as it looks for the characteristic sound of oil or gas as it enters the casing pipe, a relatively quiet and subtle noise source. Detecting and quantifying the areas of inflow within a well is possible by analysing a 3D data set of detected activity by distance/depth over a time period, as can be shown using a 2D waterfall energy map.

(67) The effects of interest may be subtle and may typically manifest themselves as variations within the noise structure rather than easily discernible features above the noise as seen in perforation detection. Reliability and accuracy of detection can be improved by emphasising areas where the energy varies in a characteristic way. The variance statistics rather than the direct energy of each channel were examined over short periods of time and used to provide indications of inflow. As can be seen in FIG. 5 this technique shows more clearly the area of inflow (marked by an arrow) and the diagonal structures (emphasised with dashed line) caused by energy or material moving up the pipe.

(68) Multiple methods of monitoring and parameterisation have been described above, and the different characteristics of the signals being and analysed (frequency content, amplitude, signal to noise) place a wide range of demands on the sensing apparatus. Due to the large dynamic range and the relatively high sampling rates of the DAS monitoring system however, all of the above monitoring and processing can be performed using the same system as shown schematically in FIG. 1.

(69) In addition, and as mentioned above, the configuration of the channels can also be adjusted, and different channel settings can be used for different monitoring operations. The channel settings can also be adaptively controlled in response to monitored data, for example if a significant fracture density occurs at a certain depth, it may be desirable to monitor that particular depth with greater resolution for a period of time, before reverting to the original channel configuration.

(70) In this way a complete monitoring program can be run by a single system over a whole sequence of well operations from perforation to fluid inflow. The system can be arranged to transition from one type of detection to another in response to detected events, and can adaptively vary both sensing and data processing parameters for a given monitoring/detection activity.

(71) In addition the DAS system may be used as a means of communicating with downhole sensors. US2009/0003133 describes a method of transmitting data from down well sensors and the like using acoustic using the casing itself as an acoustic medium. Instead the acoustic fibre may be used to receive encoded acoustic signals. Using the optic fibre means that the downhole sensors can generate much less intense acoustic signals, requiring much less power to generate. Thus battery life of the sensor can be extended. Further detection of acoustic signals via the optical fibre is far more reliable than transmitting via the casing. Co-pending application GB2010/000602 describes an acoustic transducer suitable for use in this environment.

(72) It will be understood that the present invention has been described above purely by way of example, and modification of detail can be made within the scope of the invention.

(73) Each feature disclosed in the description, and (where appropriate) the claims and drawings may be provided independently or in any appropriate combination.