Presentation: Enhanced Offshore Fire and Gas Monitoring in Real-time with the Enterprise PI System and SCADA

Repsol E&P T&T manages the offshore production of oil and gas on fourteen platforms on the East Coast of the island of Trinidad. The majority of these platforms have been recently outfitted with modern Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) based Fire and Gas (F&G) detection systems. This upgrade presented an opportunity to integrate the F&G systems to the existing Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) network ultimately connecting the offshore platforms with a central data archiving and processing server in Repsol tower in Port-of-Spain. This server houses a system known as the PI System; besides its archiving and processing capability, the PI System offers options of visualizing and organizing real time data into useful displays and reports. It is the combination of these two chief functions that will present two immediate advantages to Repsol Trinidad.

The first advantage is the instantaneous communication of offshore fires, and gas (methane and hydrogen sulphide) release to relevant onshore support personnel, including maintenance, duty manager, operations and safety. These alerts will be generated through visual and audio prompts, and even through e-mail.

The second benefit will be improved reliability of the fire and gas system, because failed detectors and malfunctioning controllers will be detected earlier, as opposed to relying on the quarterly reports of the maintenance contractor. Problem zones or platforms could be more easily identified and appropriate corrective actions taken.

This technological improvement offers obvious benefits for negligible investment. The F&G hardware, SCADA network infrastructure, and PI Systems already exist, and all that is required is the procurement of cabling, connectors and the use of in-house automation talent. Repsol E&P T&T will be managing a safer operation at a reduced operating cost for negligible investment.