Application of fiber optics in oil and gas field development—a review

Recent challenges of the petroleum industry underscore the need to optimize oil and gas production. With the global demand for petroleum resources constantly increasing with an increasing application of digital technology in oil and gas exploration, several technologies have been adopted at different phases of oil and gas field development. Recently, fiber optics technology has been deployed by oil and gas companies, and several scholars reported its application in different oil field operations. In this study, we presented a comprehensive review on the application of fiber optics in monitoring well integrity, sand production, flow profiling, fracture orientation and propagation, and enhanced oil recovery. The outcomes showed that fiber optics could provide real-time data for acquiring distributed acoustic sensing, distributed temperature sensing, and distributed strain sensing measurement for a defined well operation. Current research status on fiber optics revealed that certain challenges are still limiting the application of fiber optics in oil field operations. In the future, fiber optic technology will provide valuable data and better performance even in extreme operating conditions.