Control System World

Technip has been awarded by CNOOC Oil & Petrochemicals Company Ltd a contract to supply its proprietary ethylene technology and process design package for a grassroots 1,000 KTA(1) ethylene plant in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, People’s Republic of China. This contract also covers technical support during detailed engineering, pre-commissioning and start-up.  Key components of Technip’s ethylene technology for this project include:

• its Ultra Selective Conversion (USC®) furnace technology preferred for high-capacity, low-cost liquid and gas cracking capabilities;

• its Advanced Recovery System (ARS) technology utilizing the Heat Integrated Rectifier System (HRS), which reduces energy consumption in liquids cracker designs.

The products of this ethylene plant will feed other downstream units at the complex, including a 300,000 metric tons per annum grassroots cumene plant. The technology for the cumene plant is provided by Badger Licensing LLC(2). Technip’s operating center in Houston (Texas, USA), with the support from the Group’s operating center in Mumbai (India), is currently executing the project. Mechanical completion is scheduled by mid-2015.  Since the acquisition of Stone & Webster process technologies in 2012, Technip has widened its range of services and has reinforced its leadership in the downstream business.

Drawing on its internationally recognized leadership and expertise in industrial automation and control systems security, the International Society of Automation (ISA) has developed a knowledge-based industrial cybersecurity certificate program.  Through the work of the ISA Committee on Security for Industrial Automation & Control Systems (ISA99), ISA has developed the ANSI/ISA99, Industrial Automation and Control Systems Security standards (known internationally as ISA99/IEC 62443).

ISA’s new certificate program, the ISA99/IEC 62443 Cybersecurity Fundamentals Specialist Certificate, is designed to help professionals involved in IT and control systems security improve their understanding of ISA99/IEC 62443 principles and acquire a command of industrial cybersecurity terminology.  Developed by a cross-section of international cybersecurity subject-matter experts from industry, government and academia, the series of ISA99/IEC 62443 standards apply to all key industry sectors and critical infrastructure, providing the flexibility to address and mitigate current and future vulnerabilities in industrial automation and control systems.

The ISA99/IEC 62443 Cybersecurity Fundamentals Specialist Certificate will be awarded to those who successfully complete a designated, two-day ISA classroom training course, Using the ANSI/ISA99 (IEC 62443) Standards to Secure Your Industrial Control System (IC32), and pass a 75-question, multiple-choice exam.  While there are no required prerequisites to register for the certificate program and an application is not required to take the exam, it is helpful if interested professionals possess at least three to five years of experience in the IT cybersecurity field, with at least two of those years in a process control engineering environment in an industrial setting.

“Our new cybersecurity certificate program is another step forward in ISA’s development as a global leader in industrial cybersecurity standards, training and education, and in building on our commitment to meeting the needs of industrial control systems professionals throughout the world,” says Dalton Wilson, ISA’s Manager of Education Services.

Throughout 2013, both ISA and its sister organization, the Automation Federation, have played prominent roles in helping the US government develop a national Cybersecurity Framework designed to thwart a potentially devastating cyberattack on critical infrastructure, such as a power plants, water treatment facilities and transportation grids.

The exam:

The paper/pencil-formatted version of the ISA99/IEC 62443 Cybersecurity Fundamentals Certificate Program exam is available now. The electronic version will be available through the Prometric global network of testing centers during the first quarter of 2014.

In order to sit for the exam, applicants must register for both the aforementioned ISA course (IC32) and exam, and successfully complete the course.

The exam will cover the following areas:

• Understanding the Current Industrial Security Environment

• How Cyber Attacks Happen

• Creating a Security Program

• Risk Analysis

• Addressing Risk with Security Policy, Organization, and Awareness

• Addressing Risk with Selected Security Counter Measures

• Addressing Risk with Implementation Measures

• Monitoring and Improving the CSMS

• Designing/Validating Secure Systems

Certificate renewal requirements:

Because the ISA99/IEC 62443 Cybersecurity Fundamentals Certificate Program is a certificate and not a certification, certificate holders are not required to renew the ISA99/IEC 62443 Certificate.

However, once obtained, the certificate will only be considered current for three years. After the three-year expiration date, a certificate holder will no longer be able to claim that he or she holds a current/active ISA99/IEC 62443 certificate. In order to extend the current status of an expired certificate, a certificate holder must register for and take the related ISA99/IEC 62443 Certificate Knowledge Review. A score of 70% or higher is required to extend the current status of a certificate.

Certificate Program

SNC-Lavalin has announced that it has been awarded a contract by the Iraq Ministry of Oil’s State Company for Oil Projects (SCOP) to provide engineering services for the Iraq Export Pipeline Project.

Working closely with SCOP, SNC-Lavalin will provide front-end engineering design (FEED); long-lead items tendering and evaluation; and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) tendering and evaluation for two pipeline systems and five pump station facilities. Once completed, the pipeline system will transport 2.25 million barrels of crude oil per day and 258 million standard cubic feet of natural gas per day from a station near Basra to a station near Haditha. The work will be carried out from SNC-Lavalin’s offices in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

“We are very pleased to support SCOP,” said Terrance Ivers, Executive Vice-President, Oil & Gas, SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. “The Iraq Export Pipeline project is well aligned with SNC-Lavalin’s extensive pipeline capabilities and experience in the Middle East.”

The EK9300 PROFINET IO Bus Coupler from Beckhoff can connect different control networks with each other in a simple and efficient manner. This enables a PROFINET controller to exchange data with one or more EtherCAT, PROFINET, PROFIBUS and EtherNet/IP systems. Thus, the EK9300 can be used as a flexible gateway for real-time communication between these networks, with all the advantages provided by the EtherCAT network as an extremely high performance lower-level I/O system.

The EK9300 Bus Coupler converts the telegrams from PROFINET IO to the EtherCAT “E-Bus” signal type. One station consists of an EK9300 and any number of EtherCAT Terminals. The coupler supports the PROFINET RT protocol and, therefore, fits seamlessly into PROFINET IO networks.

With its new firmware and the corresponding EtherCAT Terminals, the EK9300 Bus Coupler can be used as a flexible gateway between different network and controller types:

from PROFINET to EtherCAT (with EL6692-0000)

from PROFINET to PROFINET (with EL6631-0010)

from PROFINET to PROFIBUS (with EL6731-0010)

from PROFINET to EtherNet/IP (with EL6652-0010).

In this way, heterogeneous production systems can be networked by real-time communication without great effort and expense. For example, product-relevant management information can be collected in distributed units with different control systems or data can be exchanged in real-time between two PROFINET networks deliberately placed in different IP spaces.

EtherCAT: High-performance sub-bus with a wide I/O product range:

The EK9300 PROFINET IO coupler offers underlying connectivity to the high-performance and ultra-fast EtherCAT I/O system. Particularly for widely distributed systems, additional advantages are gained because the EtherCAT network topology offers high flexibility and the ability to bridge long transmission distances of up to 100 m. Another key benefit is that the EK9300 Bus Coupler – in addition to its actual gateway function – supports the extremely wide I/O range of EtherCAT Terminals including numerous IP 67 box modules for installation in harsh environments. This allows the optimum mapping of the physical process on the one hand and on the other it allows the connection of a PROFINET controller via several EtherCAT slave terminals to the corresponding number of identical or different control networks.

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(Reuters) BP has signed 30-year gas production sharing and sales deals to develop Oman's Khazzan tight gas project at an estimated investment of $16 billion, the UK energy giant and Omani government announced on Monday.  The Khazzan gas project, which aims to extract around one billion cubic feet (bcf) per day of gas from deep under central Oman, is a showcase for BP's tight gas extraction technology and its success is vital for Oman's economy.

"Today's signing is an important step in the Sultanate of Oman's plans to meet growing demand for energy over the coming decades and to contribute to economic development in Oman," Oman oil and gas minister, Mohammed Al Rumhy, said in a statement after the signing in Muscat.

"The Khazzan project is the largest new upstream project in Oman and a pioneering development in the region in unlocking technically challenging tight gas through technology."

BP has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the project since winning the concession in 2007. It expects total investment of around $16 billion, equivalent to about a fifth of Oman's annual economic output, and hopes to extract enough fuel to meet around a third of Oman's current domestic gas needs.

"We are very pleased to be going ahead with this major project, which is very important for both Oman and for BP," BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said in the joint statement.  "This enables BP to bring to Oman the experience it has built up in tight gas production over many decades."

Construction is expected to begin in 2014, with first gas expected in late 2017 and plateau production of around 1 bcf, or 28.3 million cubic metres, per day expected in 2018.  BP, which will operate the project in central Oman, expects to develop around 7 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas in the Khazzan project, and to pump around 25,000 barrels per day (bpd) of gas condensate, a light oil, from the field.

The production sharing agreement and a gas sales agreement also allow BP to appraise more gas resources in Oman's Block 61, which it expects to develop later.  State-owned Oman Oil Company Exploration & Production will hold a 40 percent stake in Block 61, while BP will hold 60 percent.  BP said it had also signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with state-run and Oman Oil Company to develop a one million tonne per year acetic acid plant in Duqm, on the Arabian Sea coast of Oman.

After months of haggling, Muscat agreed in mid-2013 on the price at which BP could sell any gas it can squeeze from deep underground in Block 61 in central Oman. The agreed price has not been disclosed.

Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces the release of FAST/TOOLS® R10.01 – the latest version of a web-based real-time operations management and visualization software package that brings revolutionary changes to real-time process information intelligence. This enterprise operations solution introduces breakthrough architectural features that significantly enhance efficiency and security and improve the operational agility of remote process management infrastructure.

Development Background:

The enterprise operations and supervisory solutions market continues to grow, and a number of market research reports have identified increasing demand for the integration of various disciplines and functions that deliver operator-centric information solutions.

The introduction of more smart devices, with 200 parameters per device now the norm, and the current trend toward consolidating operations across dispersed assets over large geographical areas, has resulted in mind boggling quantities of data. Some striking numbers emerge: only 5% of this data is transferred into meaningful information, only 10% is relationally structured, and more than 50% is poor in quality. To really capitalize on the extensive data that is gathered, customers need to think about their information strategy. The requirements for an enterprise-wide operations management solution are driving the need for collaboration and information sharing across different platforms, systems, geographies, and corporate networks. This aims to provide the opportunity, with the underlying technology and network, to seamlessly connect devices and applications, while managing them as a single system from an operations, engineering, and maintenance point of view.

Recognizing that most enterprises will take a hybrid approach to management and control solutions, Yokogawa wants to help customers utilize their application investments and transform data into meaningful information by providing a transparent environment which can integrate multi-tier architectures and a variety of sources that can be accessed and shared globally.

Main Features:

• Enabling the adoption of enterprise solutions

• Information model (process hierarchy)

• New RDBMS interfaces to the enterprise environment

• Wireless mobility solution enhancements

• Enhanced ProSafe-RS support for upstream oil and gas applications

• Distributed temperature sensing and FAST/TOOLS

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Agilent Technologies Inc. has introduced the new Agilent Hydrogen Sensor for the 7890B Gas Chromatography system. The new sensor helps GC users move away from costly helium carrier gas by providing the additional level of security many organizations require in order to use hydrogen. The self-calibrating sensor will automatically execute a safe sequence for the shutdown of the GC system if even a small hydrogen leak is detected, preventing potentially hazardous situations in the laboratory.

The hydrogen sensor is the latest in a series of carrier-gas-saving solutions to help GC users deal with helium supply shortages and rising helium costs. While hydrogen provides the fastest and highest resolution for chromatographic separations, sometimes changing carrier gas from helium is not possible or practical for a particular analysis. In such cases, the Agilent Programmable Helium Conservation Module, with "Sleep-Wake" modes for the Agilent 7890B GC to conserve helium, dramatically increases the length of time a helium tank can be used and reduces the cost of helium in the laboratory.

"Because laboratories face increasing supply-chain constraints and operating costs, it is our priority to develop products that provide economical operation," said Agilent's Jason Ashe, GC product manager. "We also work with our customers to develop a wide range of applications and analyzers that use a variety of carrier gases. These allow for immediate success implementing pre-optimized methods in the laboratory, significantly reducing the time-to-first-sample."

To further reduce gas chromatography labs' reliance on helium, Agilent provides alternate carrier gas solutions to help customers further decrease consumption or migrate to alternate gases. Helium conservation eliminates the need for method revalidation-a major hurdle faced by laboratories that switch to alternative carrier gases-and can reduce helium consumption by up to 90 percent.

Yokogawa Success Story: PT PLN is a government-owned company that manages the electric power industry in Indonesia. To ensure a stable power supply for North Sulawesi province, PT PLN has built and currently operates four geothermal power plants in Lahendong, which is located 30 km south of Manado, the provincial capital. The two newest plants, Lahendong III and Lahendong IV, each produce 20 MW of electricity, and the financing for their construction was provided by the Japanese government’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) program and the Asia Development Bank (ADB), respectively.

Indonesia’s economy is growing at a remarkable rate, and the country’s demand for electricity far outstrips supply. Despite holding 40 percent of the world’s geothermal reserves, enough to produce about 30,000 MW, the country has done relatively little till now to make use of this resource. However, the Indonesian government has signaled a strong intention to begin developing the country’s geothermal resources.

Geothermal energy is a clean and renewable power source, and plants of this type produce extremely little CO2, which is a major contributor to the greenhouse effect. For this reason, efforts to make use of this resource are gaining momentum, and its development is expected to bring great environmental and economic benefits.

At the Lahendong III geothermal power plant, Yokogawa installed the CENTUM CS 3000 distributed control system (DCS) with redundant controllers, a backup system, and a test system. Based on the success of these installed systems, Yokogawa subsequently received an order to install its CENTUM VP DCS at the Lahendong IV geothermal power plant.

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