Operation of oil and gas

Operation of Oil and Gas Processing Plants
In the upcoming decade there will be large investments in gas production, and in facilities for transportation and processing. Optimal utilization of allthese facilities is vital in order to maximize the value from produced natural gas. Advanced process control and operation has raised the level of automation in the process industry significantly inthe last decades. For example in the refinery industry methods like model based predictive control (MPC) and real time optimization (RTO) have become widely used. The focus on these technologies hasgiven large benefits to the industry in form of increased throughput and more robust operation. The improvements obtained by the use of better control and decision support tools ends up directly on thebottom line for the operating companies. The substance of these tools is in fact software realization of process knowledge, control and optimization methods. MPC and RTO are now more or less off theshelf products, although for complex processes the adoption of this technology requires specialist competence.

However, there are significant potentials for further improvements in this area. Onechallenge for the gas processing plants is being able to quickly adapt the plant operation to dynamic changes in the markets, thus the plant flexibility and ability to perform rapid production changesbecomes more important. It is also required to know accurately the plant production capability, both on very short term (today-tomorrow) and on weekly, monthly and even longer horizons. And thisrequires use of advanced optimization tools and efficient process calculations. It is important to consider these issues related to dynamic operation also in the design of new processing plants, and formodification projects. Investments in this type of project have typically short payback time. Combination of individual units into an integrated plant gives a large scale control problem that is more...