Alternative Business Models to Overcome Barriers to PRM

The Permanent Reservoir Monitoring (PRM) market has been heralded as arriving imminently for over ten years now and advocates amongst both the oilfield services and operator communities remain perplexed as to why it has not happened. A number of technical and geoscience barriers have been responsible for an early lack of activity, but these have now largely been overcome although large-scale and long-term evidence is still in short supply due to the minimal implementation of PRM systems. However there are clear trends in the implementation of PRM systems and the contracting and business models used and required to implement them. The current and emerging situation of implementation is reviewed and approaches to address the up-front capital and operating cost hurdle are proposed.