Striking Opportunities

It has become increasingly mandatory over the years to shape up and adjust to make the most of, while wending one’s way deftly through, the mazes of all sorts of regulations, concerns of resource scarcity, and the demands of competition in the marketplace. Tools and instruments, strategies and solutions, have cropped up; necessity as always being the progenitor of innovation. Information technology, industrial automation and advancement in telecommunications, have delivered the goods time and again for the oil and gas sector – from exploration and drilling to the final marketing of the end-products.

In fact, the entire process chain from extraction of oil and natural gas to the final marketing of the plethora of end-products to consumers in different sectors has benefited from the benedictions of industrial automation: reduction of risk, investment costs and variability in operation expenditure, optimisation of asset performance in the industry, detection of potential problems and avoidance of costly failures, achievement of social, environmental and accounting compliance, enhancement of speed of and control over the operations, and the quality of products and services. And typically, all this accrues at no more than five percent of the total project outlay.

In a process industry like the oil & gas sector, there are equipments like motors, pump-sets, pipelines (either intra-industry ducting and piping and/or inter-nodal carriers), valves, switchgear etc., which need to be controlled to ensure that they do what they are meant to do, efficiently and effectively.

Energy efficiency and waste reduction are also among the process requirements these days, in addition to high quality of the ensuing products and promptness of the services provided. Other “clean fossil fuel” requirements like controlling the sulphur content in oil are also being taken religiously by the oil and gas sector.

The hardware performing the sensing-controllingactuating functions respond to commands from different software residing on the electronic networks. Process control is hardwired into the network and happens automatically, by and large, on plant floors, while extranets link up processing units with the supply chains upstream and the market downstream and also facilitate remote monitoring of equipment like pump-sets and pipelines (by issuing prompts to personnel in advance to respond – for instance to rehabilitate an old pipeline which may fail and lead to leakages, or replenish the inventory with raw materials).

Automation also enables extracting information from the plant floor at will, on demand, to monitor performance over time and identify nodes for potential improvement. In effect, when an automation solutions provider takes on a contract in the oil & gas sector, the focus may be on any one aspect (safety systems, compliance enabling etc., for instance) or itmay be for total process control.

Retrofits drive demand
The automation majors – ABB, Emerson, Siemens, Invensys, Yokogawa, Honeywell – have been spreading themselves out in the continent, bagging greenfield, brownfield and upgrade projects in all the sub-sectors within the oil and gas sector.

In some instances, it is a case of automating setups which they erected earlier for their clients, while in others it is a case of building and automating a new setup from scratch with the companies being hired as“main automation contractors” (MAC). Compared to the traditional approach in which an oil & gas company selectsits own diverse horde of component suppliers, here, the entireresponsibility of designing, sourcing and integrating is handled bythe MAC; quite like a 3PL (third party logistics services provider)company handles logistics operations. The MAC approach resultsin up to 30 percent cost savings.

A recent Frost & Sullivan study found that over 55 percent of all orders from the oil & gas sector for automation and controlproducts/systems are for retrofit applications. This tallies closelywith an ARC Advisory report (“Automation Trends and Solutionsin the Oil and Gas Industry”, by Larry O’Brien), which places theautomation expenditure in the sector on new plants, expansion ofexisting plants and modernisation/retrofits at 33 percent, 16 percentand 51 percent, respectively.

There is thus a stock of automation and control systems that has been built up in the global oil & gas sector, and as it ages, itwould require replacement and renewal. The value of this stock isestimated at around US$65 billion.

For example, Yokogawa recently modified Saudi Aramco’s Raleigh refinery’s process control system, with the motive of making it easier for the personnel thereof, to use, while elsewhere for the same company, it installed a gas-oil separation plant control system.

An interesting observation in the Frost & Sullivan report: 85 percent of surveyed end users said that they were “loyal” to their suppliers, placing repeat orders from the same company they had sourced from earlier.

According to ARC, revenues accruing to automation solutions providers from the oil & gas sector are dominated by DCS systems (30 percent), while SCADA systems, transmitters, safety systems and flowmeters follow, with about six percent each.

Furthermore, expenditure on automation is likely to reach US$12 billion by the end of this decade, a growth of about 50 percent in 5 years. And overall, oil & gas accounts for about 12 percent of the total expenditure on automation by all industries in the global process sector.

Players & projects
American company Emerson Process Management has for 30 years been closely associated with the oil & gas sector worldwide, incorporating Rosemount transmitters, Fisher valves, Daniel and MicroMotion Coriolis flowmeters, Fieldvue digital valve controllers (and several other products which it has designed and manufactured or acquired over the years) into its PlantWeb digital architecture.

Pleased with Emerson’s expertise at its Angolan offshore project and the Qatar LNG project, Exxon-Mobil looked it up again as its MAC for an offshore project in Sakhalin in eastern Russia. The job – equipping and automating not just the offshore platform, but also the onshore processing station, the pipeline valve stations and the oil-export terminal and tanker loading buoys downstream.

Another big name is that of the Europe-based ABB, which is the largest supplier of DCS systems to the oil and gas sector. This company has dedicated oil and gas centers in many countries around the world. Two of these are India and Malaysia.

ABB’s Norwegian branch – ABB Industri, Norway, installed a terminal automation system not very long ago at Indian Oil’s Panipat marketing terminal in northern India. All components of the system – valves, pumps, gauges, flow controller valves, uninterrupted power supply systems, security card readers, etc, were selected and supplied by or sourced from third party suppliers by ABB.

In Malaysia, in what is one of the largest LNG plants in the world, ABB’s power management system with motor control, transducers and disturbance recorders, ensures reliable power supply for continuous uninterrupted operation. And on the anvil for ABB are projects in Pakistan, Brunei, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

Deserving mention here is the “Evolution for Life” lifecycle support strategy for the service, maintenance and continuous enhancement of process automation systems in the oil & gas sector, which ABB has adopted to maintain systems installed at clients, for peak performance through adhered-to maintenance andupgrading schedules.

Skipping back to the US, Honeywell has entered into a strategic alliance with China Petroleum Planning and Engineering Institute (CPPEI) to advance the oil & gas industry in China, through information technology tools. China, needless to say, is developing an insatiable and growing appetite not only for energy, but also for general consumption of consumables derived from petroleum and natural gas.

Realising that runaway growth at times turns a blind eye to safety, the environment and resource depletion, the CPPEI is keen on improving safety, reliability and efficiency on the shop floors of the country’ petrochemical sector, by availing of Honeywell BusinessFLEX suite of process control and business management applications. Incidentally, Honeywell was associated with China’s very first LNG project not very long ago. And Honeywell was also subcontracted by SK Engineering and Construction Company of South Korea as a process control systems integrator, for a proposed oil & gas expansion project in Kuwait.

The German conglomerate Siemens has been quite active in the LNG sector in Asia over the years; its competency in power distribution systems leaving a mark in the Qatar, India, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Indonesia and Oman, among others. The Oman LNG company managed to increase its production by 12 percent, thanks to the installation of starter/helper drives for the gas turbines by Siemens.

Quite akin to ABB’s terminal management automation project in north India, Siemens integrated 19 sites run by Saudi Aramco (in Saudi Arabia) with safety systems, UPS, intercom systems, preset controllers and process automation tools. The processing sites and the loading and unloading terminals are certainly key nodes of the process chain, but the arteries which keep the system functioning ship-shape are the pipelines.

In Indonesia, Siemens set up SCADA systems to remotely monitor a 540 km pipeline carrying natural gas. Leaks often lead to losses in transit (and this translates to losses in revenue); and from a control center – also set up by Siemens – personnel can be forewarned of pipeline failures.

It is certainly not just American and European companies which aid the oil & gas sector in Asia; there is also the Japanese instrumentation and controls giant Yokogawa, In Singapore, Yokogawa has been associated with the Jurong Island gas pipeline automation system (a Sembcorp Industries project), and with the terminal automation system for

Universal Terminal Singapore.

Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Shell availed of Yokogawa’s services for a SCADA and safety system at the Malampaya deep water gas project in the Philippines. And in Indonesia, PT Badak’s LNG project and Mobil Oil’s offshore gas production project are among the many which have benefited from Yokogawa’s processcontrol systems.

Automation shows the way
This year’s June/July issue of Control Engineering Asia discussed automation in the water and wastewater sector. Needless to say, as many readers would agree after some contemplation, water and oil have been and still are key “fluids” in the geopolitical scenario. They have triggered wars, sustained governments, nourished dictatorships, and the availability thereof has often corrupted to an expression of power and might.

In the US Presidential debates, both John McCain and Barack Obama considered attaining relative self-sufficiency in energy as a prime goal for the country in the years to come. China, as stated earlier, has sensed the inevitability of automating its oil & gas process chains, with demand for energy and petroleum products on the rise. Automation will hold the key across the world – be it in exploration and harnessing of reserves, managing what isavailable wisely and utilising it efficiently.

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‘We have completed over1000 projects’

ABB is actively engaged on a number of high profile oil and gas projects in the region, Andreas Renulf, Vice-President,(Oil and Gas), ABB Singapore, tells CE Asia.

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Q: Where would you position the oil & gas sector within ABB’s capabilities?
A: ABB has over 50 years of experience in the sector and has, during this long span of time, completed over 1000 projects around the world.

In 2007, the overall sales of solutions, products, automation systems, etc, to this sector, amounted to over US$4 billion.

The company has employees catering to the oil & gas sector, working out of branches in 35 countries in the world – on all continents.

Q: ABB must be working on a number of projects in the oil & gas sector in Asia right now?
A: Yes, that’s right. I could name some: Pakistan’s Sawan Gas Field Compressor Project for which ABB is the EPC contractor; Dubai’s Fujairah Refinery Terminal Expansion project for which ABB is the MAC; Singapore’s Horizon Singapore Terminal Phase 3 for which ABB is in charge of the complete electrification and integrated terminal management and control system; and Brunei’s LNG Power Rejuvenation Project, where we handle the electrical network monitoring and control system medium voltage switchgears.

Q: And how extensive is the range of products and services to the sector?
A: ABB serves the entire process chain – from oil and gas extraction to the production of the downstream chemicals for end-uses, and our products and services can be categorized under the following classes:
• Electrification systems
• Control and automation systems
• Instrument, products and analytical systems
• Telecommunications systems
• Upstream and midstream plants on EPC basis
• Lifecycle services

Q: What about safety solutions for the sector? A: Our experience encompasses the design, installation, and maintenance of safety systems, both onshore and offshore. Applications include emergency shutdown, fire & gas, burner management, electrical distribution systems and other critical process control requirements. ABB safety systems are certified by TÜV and meet the IEC 61508 SIL1-3 standards.

We also offer safety consultancy services providing hazard and risk assessment, SIL determination, software and hardware technologies, safety tools, and completeservice and maintenance support.

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‘We have taken the role of the mainautomation contractor a rung higher’

The oil & gas sector contributes to the largest chunk of its automation revenues, John Colpo,Co-leader, Marketing and Strategy, Oil and Gas, Honeywell Process Solutions, tells CE Asia.

Q: How significant is the oil & gas sector for Honeywell?
A: Honeywell Automation and Control Systems (ACS) rakes in about US$12 billion in annual revenues in automation across all the industry sectors. Oil & gas is the largest of these, and our participation is across the entire process chain. The Honeywell Process Solutions division of ACS is the largest contributor, providing process automation, process safety, reliability, security, simulation, advanced process control and optimization, among many other solutions.

Other ACS divisions such as Honeywell Life Safety, Sensing and Control, Honeywell Security and Honeywell Environmental& Combustion also provide significant volumes of solutions to the sector.

However, our services do not stop just at automation. The company also designs, licenses and collaborates on construction of oil and gas processes such as heavy oil upgrading, gas plants, LNG and refineries. Honeywell Specialty Materials provides Spectra Fibre for the offshore oil platform security barriers; and Honeywell Aerospace and Defence provide embedded instruments for oil-drilling rigs and marine vessels.

Q: And in Asia Pacific?
A: Oil and gas production in the Asia-Pacific region is around 12 percent of global production, with the fast-growing economies of China and India emerging as big consumers of oil and gas in recent years. Honeywell’s performance in this part of the world has been commendable – we have emerged as a leading vendor of DCS, SCADA, safety instrumented systems and many other advanced IT solutions.

From the Asia-Pacific region, we often provide solutions for mega-projects in the Middle East, via engineering, procurement and commissioning contractors based in East Asia. In the last decade, Honeywell has also organically developed its oil and gas downstream business in terminal automation. This diversification was bolstered by the recent acquisition of Enraf.

Q: Which are the most common products (hardware and software) that Honeywell Process Solutions supplies to the oil & gas sector?
A: Honeywell is probably most famous for its flagship DCS systems, which for several years has been the knowledgemanagement- enhanced Experion PKS. The company’s Safety Manager is a market leader as far as SIS systems are concerned. Our Unisim simulation systems are implemented as design tools, operator training systems and commissioning checkout tools in upstream, processing and downstream.

Likewise, our Collaborative Production Management, Advanced Process Control, Real Time Optimization andSupply Chain Management and Optimization solutions to the upstream of the sector, and specifically to the fast-growing LNGsector, are also areas where Honeywell is in the forefront.

The company believes in innovation and constant improvement and has invested in developments in wireless instrumentation, online monitoring of corrosion in pipelines and vessels, and efficiency improvements across the system.

We have taken the role of the main automation contractor a rung higher by extending our service provision to clients, e.g. simulation and real-time-optimization, fire and gas detection and response systems, security monitoring, access control, video surveillance, communications infrastructure, analytics and metering systems. We have evolved from a MAC to an IMAC (integrated main automation contractor).

Q: Some major projects in the oil & gas sector that Honeywell is currently involved in?
A: Our current major showcase projects coming to a close include Shell Pearl GTL in Qatar, the world’s largest Foundation Fieldbus implementation; Syncrude Oil sands automation; and the complete refurbishment of automation on British Petroleum Alaska assets, where HPS provides in excess of US$100 million in automation solutions per project.

Other projects set to take off soon comprise the complete refurbishment of SCADA and DCS on the ZADCO Zakum offshore oilfield, and the complete LNG and Logistics Supply Chain Management System for the interconnected QatarGas LNG, RasGas LNG and RasLaffan port facilities.

In the Asia Pacific region, Honeywell has provided China with automation on its very first LNG terminal (Dapeng Guandong LNG); India with large-scale gasoline retail automation solutions; and continues to engineer a continuous stream of LNG carriers out of Korea, where we have automated 40 percent of the world’s fleet, including the first LNGRV (LNG carriers with onboard regasification) and floating storage and regasification units.

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Creating the Connection

From the drill to the pump, industrial Ethernet networking solutions are playing an increasingly important role in the oil & gas industry.By Flanker Kuo.

The reliable procurement and delivery to market of oil and natural gas is a critical issue given the global economy’s continued dependence on these resources. However, drilling for, transporting, storing, refining, and exporting oil and natural gas remain incredibly complicated undertakings, often taking place under harsh environmental conditions.

Each stage of oil and gas production involves a great deal of automation and requires reliable networks to provide data collection, PLC monitoring, and environmental control. Industrial Ethernet can play an important role in oil and gas automation during the drilling, transporting, storing, refining, and even exporting phases of production.

Indeed, within the entire process chain, industrial Ethernet devices, such as serial-to-Ethernet device servers, Ethernet switches, video servers, remote I/Os, etc, are bringing bring convenient and cost-effective integration benefits to oil and gasautomation applications.

Drilling down
A drilling platform includes the oil rig, mud pump, drilling equipment, power supply, compressor, fire control equipment, and mud and water separator. If any of these fails, the drilling process will come to a screeching halt.

In an effort to reduce the amount of downtime, oil companies have begun investing in monitoring devices to ensure that the production goes smoothly. With a good automation system in place, appropriate action can be taken immediately if an emergency arises.

When used as the communication backbone for monitoring systems used in oil exploration, industrial Ethernet is used to connect devices such as PLCs and sensors to the HMI/SCADA system, which is located in a central control room, to transmit essential device data including speed, temperature, pressure, flow speed, flow density, and other statistics for analysis or alerts.

Onshore oil production is made safer and more efficient by constructing a valve system to monitor the operation of well heads. In case of an emergency, the system triggers the emergency shutdown device (ESD) to shut down the well head automatically when emergencies such as pipeline explosions or fires occur.

Recently constructed well heads are typically outfitted with valve systems that optimize monitoring and control, whereas old well heads can be upgraded by installing additional monitoring devices.

Industrial Ethernet is crucial for well head monitoring, providing a high availability solution to accommodate harsh desert conditions, such as dramatic temperature differences, and high volumes of sand and dust.

Integrating data from PLCs, voice, and video is particularly easy for IP network architectures. Remote control and data exchange between remote and central sites can be achieved with fiber optic cables that are usually wired to the sides of oil pipelines.

Offshore drilling platforms are substantially more complicated, and are more expensive to build and operate, compared with onshore drilling rigs. Part of the reason for the increase in complexity is because offshore drilling platforms require additional devices for monitoring and management in addition to automation devices for exploration.

These include large scale cradles, ventilation equipment, air-conditioning systems, lighting facilities, drainage systems, and power facilities, which together turn an offshore drilling platform into a virtual city at sea.

Safety rules for offshore operations are based on extremely strict standards. A first line of defense is the CCTV surveillance system, which is used to monitor the overall safety of the platform and operators. Most offshore drilling platforms have independent CCTV surveillance systems, and some even integrate the CCTV system into the existing network backbone.

However, IP surveillance solutions such as IP video servers and IP cameras are emerging as the new trend as they offer greater installation flexibility and easier maintenance compared with traditional CCTV and DVR (digital video recorder) systems.

Industrial Ethernet devices such as switches and converters can be either used as the communication backbone of an offshore drilling platform, or installed on floating production platforms to bridge facilities between different platforms. Wireless networks can be used to connect devices at sites with environmental constraints.

Transport & store
After a successful drilling, crude oil springs up from an underground reservoir and is immediately transported by pipeline to a three-phase separation station, which works like a front-end processor to separate the crude oil into oil, gas, and water before forwarding the fluids downstream to the next processing station.

Data from numerous valves and separation devices in the station must be collected and monitored over the network. One option is to daisy chaindifferent devices in separate sectors to a fiber redundant ring topology, and use PLCs or remoteI/Os to collect data.

Wireless Ethernet is an alternative to a wired network. By installing an AP (access point) at a high elevation at each station, data can be broadcasted over the wireless network to the control site. Wireless transmission efficiently eliminates cabling hassles.

However, bandwidth is a critical factor that needs to be taken into careful consideration when deploying a wireless infrastructure. Using low bandwidth or transmitting video data can slow down transmissions, and as a result affect the accuracy of data and make real-time control impossible.

When oil and gas are separated, the crude oil is transported to remote storage sites or the nearest harbor area by pipelines or tankers. Pipelines can cover enormous distances and sometimes even cross the borders between countries.

“Pipeline monitoring” now means providing easy-to-use and realtime management systems to decrease the risk of explosion, leaking, and sabotage, and as such is now an extremely critical issue in the oil and gas industry. True pipeline monitoring is much easier to attain if it is possible to set up an optical fiber network infrastructure. In this case, monitoring devices can be installed directly alongside the pipeline.

However, using long distance wireless transmission, such as GSM/GPRS, is a viable alternative if it is not feasible to set up a fiber infrastructure. In this case, the monitoring system connects directly to serial-based or Ethernet-based devices and data is transmitted through the GSM/GPRS network.

After being transported downstream for storage and further processing, crude oil is often stored in either subterranean or harbor area storage tanks, while natural gas is either liquefied for storage or distributed to mid or downstream plants.

These storage utilities or transport pipelines need to be monitored cautiously to prevent leaks and excessive gas tank pressure, which endanger the plant’s safety. Data including fluid volume, pipe pressure and temperature are critical information. Tanks, valve and pressure pumps in the storage sites are frequently connected and monitored through fiber mode or Ethernet switches to the centralmanagement systems.

Running the refinery
Suffice it to say that the refining process, which converts complex molecules into substances with simpler chemical structures, is extremely complicated, in part because a variety of different processes are required to refine the different end-substances.

The distributed control system, or DCS for short, is the main control system used in the refining process to manage a plant’s output and performance. The DCS is a vital part of the plant’s architecture, and as such the system cannot be allowed to shut down unexpectedly during operation.

The boiler, for example is a typical DCS application that creates heat and steam, and also handles the processing and draining of water. The complete production process cannot be interrupted requires extremely stable operation – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

One of the biggest fears of plant managers is that the plant’s DCS will shut down because of a failure at a single seemingly inconsequential point in the system. For this reason, redundant systems are an essential part of the design of any DCS: all devices and facilities (including the main and backup control stations, main and backup controllers, hot and hot standby devices, dual LANs, dual communication modules and interfaces, and dual detecting devices) must be backed up by a redundant system.

In some cases, multi-redundant systems are required to realize higher system reliability. For example, when Ethernet is used as the communication backbone, it is common to set up two independent networks, which we could call LAN 1 and LAN 2. When the default network crashes, devices can continue to transmit data through the backup network.

In the same respect, all controllers, servers and HMI/SCADA systems are always equipped with dual communication interfaces, and data is transmitted simultaneously through both interfaces to prevent data loss if one of the networks goes offline.

A metering or valuation system controls a refinery’s performance and the use of materials. Flow rate, flow speed, and flow density measurements are critical to maintaining the safety and efficiency of the plant. All of this data is collected and transmitted through the metering system to the server host where it is compiled and analyzed. The data must be available to the DCS in real-time (keep in mind that for Ethernet networks, “real-time” implies a small time delay) to optimize the output and operation of the plant.

As with the DCS, the metering system also requires a redundant backup architecture to ensure that cost calculations for the refinery are accurate. Refinery costs are based on data collected by the metering system.

The system is normally equipped with at least two redundant backup solutions to guarantee 100 percent data accuracy and prevent unexpected errors. The flow computer is one of the system’sessential components. It can be regarded as a DCS sub-system that intercepts fluid data and transmits the data to a DCS center tofacilitate the operation of the plant.

An auxiliary system in refinery plants is used to detect gas and liquid leaks. Although not directly involved with production, it forewarns plant and field operators of potentially unsafe leaks in the pipes used to transport gases and liquids. Leak detectors are connected by a multi-mode fiber optic network, and when a leak is detected, the central control system immediately notifies field operators to take precautions, and may even shut down the system.

Active alarm systems have emerged as the newest trend for providing comprehensive and critical data for leak detection management. Active Ethernet I/O products can instantly report events via e-mail, SMS, or real-time messages. By informing operators of the situation in the field in real-time, the response time can be cut substantially.

Station to station
Refinery end-products include gasoline, petrochemicals, lubricants, and plastics, all of which we see and use daily. Petrol stations, for example, now rely heavily on automation for a number of important functions.

Automation helps make the operation of gas stations more secure by connecting the petrol pumps at a station directly to a POS (point of sale) system. In fact, petrol stations can operate independently by using an embedded computer in each pump.

However, large petrol stations need to interconnect multiple gas pump islands and machines before transmitting data through the communication backbone to a remote management center. In addition, multiple petrol stations that are all managed by the same company may need to be interconnected to cross check customer information, or provide transaction data forfurther analysis.

Flanker Kuo is Senior Engineer at Moxa (www.moxa.com).The company supplies industrial Ethernet devices to the oil & gas industry.

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