Control System World

His Excellency Dr. Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada, Minister of Energy and Industry of the State of Qatar, Chairman and Managing Director of Qatar Petroleum, and Yves-Louis Darricarrère, Total’s President, Upstream, signed today a Heads of Agreement on Al Khalij field, offshore Qatar, for a further 25 years.

Located about 130 kilometers east of the Qatari coast, Al Khalij field was discovered by Total in 1991 and commenced production in 1997 pursuant to an Exploration and Production Sharing Agreement (“EPSA”), which was signed in 1989 and is due for expiry in early 2014.

Under the new HOA, QP and Total will have a 60/40 operating interest in the field following the expiry of the EPSA, and Total will continue to operate the field.

Commenting on the QP/Total partnership on Al Khalij field, His Excellency Dr. Mohammed bin Saleh Al-Sada, Qatar’s Minister of Energy and Industry said: "We have been working with our long time partner, Total, on Al Khalij field since its discovery. It has been a mutually beneficial and fruitful partnership. We are pleased to sign this new agreement to further develop the field as part of His Highness, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani’s vision to continue to prudently develop our natural resources and to increase Qatar’s hydrocarbon reserves.”

The HOA is further evidence of Total’s commitment to Qatar. This commitment took a new dimension when the company was one of the first participants in the multi-billion dollar gas projects in Ras Laffan. Total subsequently participated in other large developments in Qatar’s refining and petrochemicals sectors as well.

“This new agreement exemplifies the long-standing partnerships forged with the State of Qatar, as it reflects Total’s commitment to work hand in hand with QP. I am delighted to see Total continuing to be recognized, not only for operational excellence in the energy sector, but also as an active member of Qatar’s community and society at large,” stated Mr Darricarrère.

The ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute (WCI) today announced the completion of another successful interoperability trial in which it verified its new Generic Client Interface (GCI) specification, which is applicable to ANSI/ISA-100.11a based gateways.

Conducted at ISA headquarters in North Carolina, gateways from Yokogawa, Honeywell and Nivis successfully demonstrated interoperability with a WCI test client. The first production client to use GCI will be GE’s System 1® product which was also successfully tested during the trial.

System 1® is GE’s patented conditioning monitoring software platform for real-time optimization of equipment and selected processes, condition monitoring and event diagnostics that enables plant personnel to quickly identify important events, evaluate the situation and respond, leading to increased equipment availability, reliability and reduced maintenance costs.

ANSI/ISA-100.11a is flexibly designed to support legacy and/or proprietary protocols and the GCI is an example of how the ANSI/ISA-100.11a wireless standard can deliver that result.

“We are excited to see the success of this interoperability test conducted by the ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute. WCI plays a crucial role in the success of ISA100 in the industrial space," said Hitoshi Yasui, general manager of Wireless

Research and Development Business Unit, Yokogawa Electric Corporation. "Yokogawa has demonstrated leadership in defining, developing and deploying the ISA100 family of standards. We believe unique features of ISA100 allow Yokogawa to provide solutions to meet our industrial customers’ requirements. Customer satisfaction has always been, and will always be, the primary goal of Yokogawa."

“With the successful outcome of the test, we continue to look forward to additional interoperability tests planned for the coming year with more ISA100-certified products in the queue to confirm the scalability, reliability and performance benefits of the ANSI/ISA-100.11a standard,” said Andre Ristaino, managing director of WCI.

A joint venture led by SNC-Lavalin International Co. Inc., a member of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. (TSX: SNC), and including GyM S.A. and Techint International Construction Corp, has been selected by Minera Panama S.A. (MPSA), a subsidiary of Inmet Mining Corporation of Canada, to proceed with detailed engineering, procurement and construction of the process plant at the Cobre Panama project in Panama.

The engagement will be performed in two phases. Under the first phase, the joint venture has been instructed to proceed with the detailed engineering and procurement of the plant. In the fourth quarter of 2013, upon satisfactory advancement of detailed engineering, the joint venture will be instructed to proceed with the construction of the facility.

The process plant will be designed to treat a nominal throughput of 160,000 tonnes per day using two grinding lines, each with a capacity of 80,000 tonnes per day. The ore feed rate is expected to increase to 240,000 tonnes per day after the ninth year of operation, allowing MPSA to maintain concentrate production levels despite a falling head grade.

“We are very pleased with the confidence that Inmet continues to demonstrate in our commitment to their project,” said Dale Clarke, Executive Vice-President, SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. “SNC-Lavalin has industry leading expertise in the copper sector, and we are proud to put it to work for Inmet at their world-class Cobre Panama mine.”

The detailed engineering and procurement of equipment for the process plant has begun. The Cobre Panama project is scheduled to be operational in 2016 and is expected to have a life of approximately 30 years.

Rotork is supplying an all-electric valve actuation package encompassing isolating, regulating and modulating actuators with two-wire digital control for the DanTysk offshore wind farm in the North Sea.

Almost one hundred Rotork quarter-turn electric actuators will control butterfly valves on the DanTysk transformer platform, situated 70 kilometres west of the German island of Sylt. The contract includes fitting the actuators to the valves, which has been performed prior to delivery at the specialist actuation workshop facilities attached to Rotork Holland, where the order was won.

Approximately half the actuators are IQTPro intelligent isolating and regulating duty units, the balance comprising CVA fully modulating control valve actuators. Both designs share advanced and user friendly non-intrusive programming and commissioning technologies, combined with comprehensive integral data logging, diagnostic and asset management capabilities. Rugged, double-sealed IP68 watertight and explosionproof enclosures enhance long-term reliability in the harshest of environments, as can often be encountered in offshore applications.

Rotork CVA electric actuators deliver continuous, repeatable modulating control with a programmable fail to position option. Resolution, repeatability and hysteresis performance is quoted at less than 0.1% of full scale, offering suitability for the most demanding control valve applications.

Digital two-wire control is provided by Rotork’s proprietary Pakscan P3 system, the third generation of a market-leading product, capable of monitoring and controlling up to 240 field units without repeaters on a single highway with a length of up to 20 kilometres. Designed specifically for the valve actuation environment, Pakscan incorporates secure field communications with inbuilt network redundancy to maintain control even in the event of equipment or cable failure. On the DanTysk project the Pakscan network master station will link the actuators to a distributed control system and to a remote, centralised monitoring centre situated at Esbjerg in Denmark.

The Siemens Industry Automation Division now presents Sirius 3SK1, a flexible and modular range of safety relays. The component portfolio has been greatly reduced compared to its predecessor, thus simplifying selection and use. For example, different basic units are no longer required for mechanical and electronic sensors. 3SK1 is part of Siemens' Safety Integrated concept. Safety Integrated was devised to make engineering much simpler and to increase the availability of automation systems. This concept cuts the time required to implement new machines and plants and to adapt them to new requirements.

Siemens is now offering the new Sirius 3SK1 safety relays for monitoring and control systems with simple safety requirements, such as emergency stop or protective door monitoring. The product range takes the form of a clearly structured modular system so that plant operators can quickly, simply and economically assemble an appropriate and safe configuration. The Standard and Advanced basic units are available with relay or semiconductor outputs. This means that Sirius 3SK1 is able to efficiently cover every kind of application situation. The system portfolio is rounded off by modules with additional connections for actuators or sensors and a power supply.

The Standard basic units are characterized by their simple handling and variable functionality. Both mechanical and electronic sensors can be connected to the safety relay by means of screw-type or spring-loaded terminals. DIP switches on the front of the enclosure can be used for parameter assignment so there is no need for software. Should there not be enough connections for actuators on the Standard basic unit, the user can flexibly connect additional output expansions from the modular system.

The Advanced basic units feature all the product characteristics of the Standard version and not only allow the addition of modules with output expansions, but also of modules with input expansions for additional sensors. Another advantage of the Advanced basic unit: using device connectors developed by Siemens, the basic units and expansion modules can be quickly and simply plugged on without laborious manual wiring. That means there is no chance of any wiring errors occurring and commissioning is speeded up. Siemens offers a version with a rotary encoder switch for applications that require a delayed safe disconnection of actuators. There is also a Mini version of the Advanced basic unit. At just 17.5 mm wide, the Mini is ideal for use in a confined space.

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Technip has been awarded by Total E&P Angola an engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning (EPIC) contract for the second phase of the Girassol Resources Initiatives (GirRI) development project. The field is located 210 kilometers offshore Angola, at a water depth of 1,300 meters.

The contract covers the project management, engineering, fabrication and installation of:

• 21 kilometers of umbilicals(1),
• 13 kilometers of interconnecting power cable between the Dalia and the Girassol floating production storage and offloading units (FPSO), both delivered by Technip,
• the recovery and disposal of four rigid spools(2),
• the installation of eight new flexible spools.

Technip Angola Engenharia(3) will share responsibility for the overall project management and engineering of this subsea project with Technip UK. Various steel structures will be fabricated by the Angoflex(3) spoolbase in Dande, Angola. The flexible spools will be fabricated at Technip’s manufacturing plant in Le Trait, France. The offshore campaign is scheduled for the end of 2014, with the main installation vessel being from Technip's fleet.

KBR (NYSE: KBR) has announced today that it has been awarded the Joint Operational Fuel System contract by the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD).  KBR will supply the MOD with fuel-handling equipment which will be used on operations and in support of military exercises worldwide. The contract is for an initial two-year period and will involve the supply of equipment and services worth approximately $35 million.

“The award of this contract is key to the strategic development of our UK based support to the MOD,” said Andrew Pringle, President, International Government, Defence and Support Services (IGDSS). “The MOD remains a key client of IGDSS and we look forward to ensuring that the MOD continues to receive outstanding support.”

Kepware® Technologies announced today the release of KEPServerEX® 5.10. Significant in the release is the new ABB TotalFlow communications driver, additional support to the Electronic Flow Measurement (EFM) option, and EFM support to the Fisher ROC and ROC+ drivers for the Oil & Gas industry. Drawing on its legacy as one of the industry's most respected industrial automation software providers, Kepware also made enhancements to its entire library of communication drivers covering all industries to ensure optimal performance and reliability and enhanced the KEPServerEX communications server platform to streamline management and diagnostics of devices.

"Connecting disparate automated devices and systems is our business, and we excel at identifying and deploying the right solution to meet the specific challenges of every industry we serve," said Tony Paine, President and CEO of Kepware Technologies. "The experience we bring to the Oil & Gas industry is backed by our proven interoperability, centralized communications and scalability."

Keeping track of who provided how much product to a pipeline is a laborious and difficult task associated with custody transfer in the midstream and upstream markets. Kepware's KEPServerEX helps streamline the delivery of information across the Oil & Gas supply chain by automatically polling the pipeline's Flow Computers and collecting their historical flow data. This data is then formatted properly and stored locally for input to the industry's leading flow analysis and accounting solutions such as Flow-Cal and PGAS, via KEPServerEX's enhanced EFM Exporter. The EFM Exporter now includes the ability to export user-configurable CSV files for use in custom flow-analysis solutions, operational monitoring and analysis, as well as easy data storage.

Kepware continues to enhance its core server with a focus on deployment, management, and diagnostics. All drivers in Kepware's EFM Suite now offer both EFM and real-time data, allowing customers to consolidate their data into a single-server communications platform. Additional KEPServerEX 5.10 features include:

• New driver for ABB Totalflow devices.
• New EFM support to the company's existing Fisher ROC and ROC+ drivers, further enhancing communications to Flow Computers.
• Added COM port sharing for serial-based drivers. This new feature serializes multiple communication protocols over a single network in order to streamline telemetry over radio or modem systems. This functionality is particularly relevant for telemetry applications, including Oil & Gas, Water/Waste Water, and Power Distribution.
• New organizational views in the server Configuration enables more efficient management of large projects. The added feature enables users to "Organize by Driver" and "Organize by Connection," helping individuals efficiently diagnose and correct network issues. In addition, users now have the ability to view shared connections as well as what Network Interface Cards and virtual networks are being used.

Aside from Kepware's new products for the Oil & Gas industry, the company is also announcing its preparation for Rockwell Automation's ControlLogix v21 firmware update. Kepware is working closely with Rockwell in order to implement the new Symbol Instance Addressing, which replaces the Direct Memory Access (DMA).