At the beginning of 2016, Schlumberger partnered with an oil company in the Middle East to set up the operator's first in-house Artificial Lift Surveillance Center. The objective was 24/7 monitoring of a selected population of ESPs across all the operator's fields.

Previously, real-time data was available but not fully used. As a result, unidentified causes were leading to multiple early ESP failures and reduced run life. Continuous surveillance using proprietary Schlumberger workflows and procedures increased run life and oil production while virtually eliminating early ESP failures among the selected wells.