The University of Texas System

Bp Corporation North America Inc.

Scott Fish

Joseph Jefferson Beaman, Jr

Warren Jeffrey Winters

David A Foti

A well monitoring system particularly useful in detecting kicks in the well includes a well, a well system, and a computing apparatus. The well defines a wellbore and the well system includes at least one sensor measuring at least one well condition. The computing apparatus hosts a well monitoring software component that performs a method to detect a kick in a well. The method includes: storing a set of real-time data from a measurement of a well condition by the sensor, the measurements being correlative to an unplanned fluid influx into the well; modeling the operation of the well with a physics-based, state space model of the well system to obtain an estimate of the well condition; and applying the real-time data set and the estimate to a probabilistic estimator to yield a probability of an occurrence of a kick and a confidence measure for the probability.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Scott Fish