Page 164: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (May/Jun 2014)

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Automating Assets

Knowing performance levels boosts asset lifecycle, pro? tability

By Ellen Fussell Policastro and adjusts to changing user and application demands tatoil’s Valemon oil ? eld is located 160km west for information.

S of the Norwegian coast and is one of the interna- This case is just one of many trends making waves tional energy company’s largest development projects. in the offshore oil industry. Others include creative

The site contains recoverable reserves of 26 billion cu. uses of radio frequency identi? cation (RFID) on the m of gas and ? ve million cu. m of condensate, which platform and below the surface, virtual visualization equates to over 1% of Norway’s gas reserves. software, and cloud storage of critical information to

The company will begin work this year to deploy an more effectively manage assets offshore.

integrated control and safety system to enable re- The key to maintaining and managing an asset is to mote operation of the Valemon platform, running the look at it from a lifecycle standpoint – from its design entire operation from the existing and operation to retirement.

Kvitebjørn platform. “With this type “Understanding the health of the asset is critical to

STORY FAST FACTS of remote monitoring and visualiza- maintaining and extending asset life,” Winters said. tion,” users can more effectively “With high-dollar equipment especially, that means • RFID gets rugged for monitor and support equipment “to accessing data and turning that data into actionable offshore use minimize downtime without de- information.” ploying resources to the platform,” A damaged compressor, for instance, could mean • Virtual visualization said Bart Winters, product director a US$2 million project to overhaul. “It means taking enables better remote for Honeywell Asset Management the compressor out of service, shipping it to shore, monitoring

Solutions in Phoenix, Arizona. overhauling, and then returning it to the platform. With

This system integrates an au- compressor monitoring, we can use advanced algo-

Cloud stores data; transfers • tomation platform and software rithms to detect abnormal conditions; then engineer- knowledge from onshore applications to enable a distrib- ing and maintenance can investigate and determine uted control system to integrate the proper intervention or response.” disparate data across facilities and feed it all into a And it’s not only equipment that needs precision unified automation system. A distributed systems planning to keep operations a? oat. Everything to do architecture integrates processes for multiple units, with the offshore process becomes an astronomical control rooms, or geographically distributed locations expense when it all has to be mobilized. Working on oedigital.com 166

OE | May 2014REVIEW 0514OER_Asset_mgt.indd 166 4/19/14 11:30 AM