A few years ago, a completely autonomous job site for flowback was unthinkable. Now, as the upstream industry revolutionizes operations with new technologies, Enercorp’s eFlowback technology promises a completely autonomous tool for flowback and sand management while reducing equipment footprint and minimizing personnel costs.

Launched last week in collaboration with BPX Energy, the new technology enables the entire job site to run autonomously, significantly reducing the need for personnel on site.

“Flowback has historically been a space where there has been very little innovation,” EnerCorp President Mark Freeman, told Hart Energy.

“Service companies operating in the flowback space don’t have the technology…they buy commodity equipment from fabrication shops and rent used equipment and then find flowback operators to help bring the wells online.”

Freeman noted that Enercorp—like other service companies—operated without technology in its early days, but quickly realized that solids and sand management was a key issue in the flowback space. About 10 years ago, the company began developing technologies to address sand production in the flowback space.

“Over the course of the last decade, we have evolved the technology to the point where in a single vessel, we can capture the vast majority of solids and sand produced on a well…Once we were able to do that, we knew we could automate the process,” Freeman said.

He added, however, that there are certain risks associated with flowback automation because of which an in-depth assessment was critical before launching the technology.

“When you have a human on site and if there is an issue, then humans can recognize the problem and address it. While developing eflowback, we carried out thorough risk assessment processes and piloted the technology on location for months and months ahead of the commercial release and that’s why, having a partner like BPX was so important to collaborate with,” Freeman said.

He continued, “When eFlowback is set up on the well site, we are actually monitoring various process conditions like pressure and measurements in real-time to understand if there is something abnormal going on and if so, the system knows what to do to address that issue.”

There are many separate components that make up eFlowback technology, Freeman noted, adding that it’s vital for these “point solutions” to work together as a complete digital flowback ecosystem to generate value. Through the automated control unit, operators can monitor the full ecosystem, which begins with Sahara Advanced Cyclone—EnerCorp’s sand separation technology, which Freeman said is the “linchpin of eFlowback”. The system also includes an automated choke manifold, up to four automated blowdown units and a sand quantification unit. All of this equipment can be remotely monitored and controlled with cloud-based software and an intuitive graphical user interface.

Freeman pointed out that eFlowback also addresses safety risks and environmental challenges. “We’ve really put a tremendous amount of effort and focus on hazardous operational reviews, risk assessments and we’ve spent multi-day sessions walking through every ‘what-if’ and making sure we have an engineered reaction to all of those scenarios.”

Although the technology was announced last week, Freeman explained that it has been in operation in ‘pilot mode’ for about 8 months over a variety of well sites in the Permian Basin. “We have managed about 270,000 lbs of sand returns, about 5,000 automated blowdowns and detected 240 events remotely. And throughout all of this deployment, we had zero leaks.”

“We are very excited about the technology and the progress we have seen,” Freeman said.

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