The Move From Local Control To Remote Operations of Oil & Gas Facilities

In Oil & Gas industry,?there is a great potential to apply digital technologies and agile processes to increase production efficiency and plant integrity, while minimizing environmental impact and improving the safety of the people involved.

?For oil and gas projects to be economically viable, costs need to come down and production and efficiencies need to go up. This has always represented great challenges for Oil & Gas field developments and requires innovative ideas beyond traditional thinking. One of those innovative solutions is implementing the concept of remote monitoring and control of facilities from integrated remote center, usually the Head office. Over the past few years, many industries began adopting certain remote capabilities and developed a roadmap to autonomous operations. Each company had their own reason to do so and their own timeline—some charged in full force, while others have been doing it slowly and in piecemeal.?Reasons for implementing new technologies in automation and digital systems have centered around achieving higher productivity, waste reduction, addressing labor shortages and replacing unhealthy, dangerous and repetitive tasks. However, What we did not foresee, is how almost overnight, a world-wide pandemic would push itself to the top of the list of above reasons.

?The rapid spread of COVID-19 has forced social distancing, travel restrictions and offshore activities. Oil & Gas Activities were challenging recently, including Start up, commissioning and operations in onshore and offshore, as many operators find themselves now grappling with a reduced?staff, as certain individuals must stay at home due to underlying health conditions, or they must maintain a certain distance from their colleagues, making it difficult to perform an operation, or they are simply not even able to travel to the site. COVID-19 has?shown us how essential it is for industries to have the ability to perform and support tasks remotely, develop a digital asset, as it can allow them to optimize operations not only in normal times, but especially in such uncertain times. The implementation of Digital solutions can secure cost reductions in various areas of Field lifecycle?and enable remote operations to address current challenges.

?Emerging technologies in today’s market has the capability and capacity to enable such kind of solution, it embraces digital solutions that facilitate integrated intelligent Operations to enable the integration of people & technology and execute remote Operation in enhanced knowledgeable environment. However, The concept of remote operations is not new for Offshore fields, many of the offshore facilities are already on-stream, those facilities have been designed “Normally Unmanned”. However, remote monitoring and control of a full fledge unmanned facility is not common in the Oil & Gas industry. There is an increasing trend around the world to adopt the remote operation approach to reduce cost and enhance safety of operations.

Implementing remote operation concept for normally unmanned facility requires close coordination between Engineering, maintenance and Operations to ensure that the facility’s design covers operational & maintenance needs in a safe and efficient manner. The design of remote control fields should go through many design gates reviews and safety studies such as HAZID, HAZOP, SIL, etc. and conduct a risk assessments to address hazards that could pose risks to the facility and people during remote operation of the facilities. The conventional philosophy of operations to be updated and emergency response philosophy must be detailed and address all emerging challenges of remote operations

?There are 3 maturity levels of Oil & Gas remote operations:

1. ?Remote Monitoring with real time operations data available and replicated at Head office for monitoring only, in addition to data related to asset health, diagnostics and performance monitoring, and KPI. ?in many cases we see remote centers have high level control for emergency responses to overcome local operations.
2. Remote Control where the main control in remote area and facilities are fully unmanned, Field control is used as a backup control center. control and monitoring functions shall be designed to operate remotely without the need for Operators support at the field such that the entire facility shall be designed to start-up with a single pushbutton concept.
3. Autonomous Operations, it is the ultimate goal of Owner operators, today, just few autonomous plants are under operations globally. remote operation helps operator to build a new knowledge and see how to remotely optimize production. In addition, when the actionable insights are brought into the continuous closed loop process, it acts like an self-driving car, autonomously optimizing optimum production and emergency response. In the near future, we are moving towards closed-loop automation, a process that allows systems to recognize and respond to events without human intervention.

?Today’s efforts are centralized on level 1 & 2 while autonomous operations is the future ambition

Remote monitoring (level 1) enable the deployment of smart and intelligent solutions incorporating state-of-the-art digital applications and visualizations tools to bring more collaboration and visibility across various Sites, thus bring improvements in Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, Asset Performance Optimization and Health Safety & Environment Management, thereby, would increase overall efficiency across Business. This will facilitate diagnoses & analysis to enhance equipment performance benchmarking, and allow predictive and better planned maintenance, and identify profitability and Process improvement opportunities. This will enable decision makers at all levels to access relevant and timely information to take action in line with Corporate Objectives. Central Remote monitoring solution support the cascading of KPI’s across the various business units so that individual business unit contributions to overall business goals are easily analyzed and understood. ?A great example of this is ADNOC Panorama, a central remote monitoring for entire assets productions and operations.

"Today we are able to operate our entire life remotely e.g. buying airline tickets, shopping, virtual cinemas, tax declaration.. etc. and we really feel that this is very convenient and often criticize organizations that still mandate physical presence and are not transforming their services to remote/digital services. Demand for digital is becoming a norm and I believe digital transformation is a way of life and is a reflection of how resilient the organizations are. It is also an indicator of forward looking and future ready companies. Remote facilities and operations will become a norm, we will continue to use smarter instruments and equip our operation with AI and smarter algorithms till we reach “ Self-operated Facilities”" said Khaled Al Blooshi, Vice President, Digital Projects & Innovation at ADNOC.

The design of remote control Field (Level 2) should address many additional areas, The design and selection of field instrumentation shall take into consideration the requirement of the Zero-Manning concept, thus to ensure accurate and enough measurement signals to the ICSS to enable safe and efficient monitoring, control and operation of the entire facilities. Also, a high level of automation is required which should take into consideration the requirements of diagnostics, predictive and preventive maintenance functions, communication infrastructure and networks, etc. Motor Operated valves represents an essential element for the remote operation, where it shall be utilized to help the start-up sequence to progress from ongoing step to next step of sequence and switch out equipment and isolation. CCTV shall be provided at different area of the facilities to ensure safe conditions for remote operation. Telecom systems to minimize the site visits. CCTV cameras shall be AI powered and provides 360-degree view of all areas. Cybersecurity is another area to be addressed deeply.

?The digital revolution and current communications technology has opened the door for better remote operations of Oil & Gas facilities regardless of the physical location of Operators. This enables access of information and operational activities in real time, 24/7/365. This shift promoted a new way of working, through better use of data from the digital world to inform Operators about the process & Site conditions, with decreased reliance on routine site rounds on the facility; and thus improve safety risk for personnel.

The system requirements for remote operation and integrated intelligent operations begin with components which are already in common practice, such as integrated control and safety systems, and the automation of valve, MOVs, motors, and other operations in process plants. Beyond these basics, extra attention is needed to ensure sufficient numbers and correct types of field instruments are provided to enable remote monitoring and control of the facility as well as monitoring of the performance and degradation of the machinery and equipment and avail single push button concept to start up the facility and hydro carbon products reaches to interface Tie-in stations to be feasible. Tools for data analytics and remote monitoring and diagnostics to enhance equipment performance, and allow predictive and better planned maintenance should be in place.

Further considerations have to do with designing spare equipment’s with manual and automatic changeover for plant availability without requiring equipment disassembly or other actions requiring human intervention.

?On-site physical presence has been the norm for operations for so many years since the Industrial Revolution. Shifting operations away from the center of the plant, and moving to a virtual presence of operators as the primary mode of interaction and operation is certainly a significant change in ways of working. While this changes relies on new digital technologies to address new operational practice, there are potential positive benefits can result almost from this change, If managed appropriately, the cultural shift could result in a higher overall productivity and effectiveness for the personnel, as it may bring increased job satisfaction and a tangible sense that their experience, and skills are being utilized more effectively by using the modern technologies for remote operation.

Cultural change is an important factor for the success of remote operations and we should give it a careful attention prior to commissioning and start-up of this project.

??To unlock full rewards of remote innovative solutions, an optimum design of the operational environment with respect to human factors, task analysis, and technology is required. The remote control design needs to reflect people, processes, organisation and technology.