Proficy used for BP's 'Fields of the Future'

BP has chosen Silvertech to develop an integrated control and safety system for a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel in the Schiehallion oil-field, west of Shetland.

Silvertech chose the HMI/Scada software from GE Fanuc's Proficy production and automation software suite, in response to a BP initiative looking at 'best practice' solutions within its 'Fields of the Future' project.

The design solution provided the capability to test the existing and new systems in parallel to ensure an uninterrupted, smooth transition to the new infrastructure.

The Schiehallion field is situated to the north of Scotland and to the west of the Shetland Isles.

It is located in the Shetland Trough area of the north-east Atlantic, in 400m of water.

Four of the five blocks in the field are operated by BP, with all its well-heads tied back to the FPSO.

A turret swivel, fixed to the sea-bed, acts as the conduit for the oil pipelines, power lines and control-system cables between the FPSO and the well-heads on the sea-bed.

The FPSO is 246m long, can process up to 142,000 barrels of oil a day and can store up to 950,000 barrels.

Shuttle tankers visit in four-to-six-day cycles, offloading around 600,000 barrels of oil in a 24-hour period for transportation to the onshore oil markets.

BP carried out an obsolescence study and capacity review that included the Schiehallion field.

It was faced with Unix-based legacy monitoring and control systems that were nearing the end of their supportable life.

BP asked Silvertech to help develop a 'life of field' strategy for control and safety for the Schiehallion production infrastructure.

Silvertech developed an integrated control and safety system, using as much as possible of the original installed hardware infrastructure.

This ensured the ability to test the existing and new systems in parallel and ensured an uninterrupted, smooth transition to the new infrastructure.

The system operates 24/7 so it had to be robust and easy to transfer while running live.

At the heart of the HMI/Scada system are three servers, each with a matching server to provide redundancy.

These act as masters to a number of slave PC workstations located in the central control room and local viewers located fore and aft on the vessel.

Another matching pair of servers provides the SQL database.

The original twisted pair network has been replaced by fibre-optic cables to handle the increase in traffic created by the Cimplicity polling methodology.

Every server, workstation and PLC is connected to two redundant, parallel fibre-optic networks to provide easy switch-over should a problem arise in one network.

The Ethernet modules on the redundant pairs of GE Fanuc 90-70 PLCs on the FPSO were also replaced to handle the fibre-optic signalling.

Redundant pairs of 90-70 PLCs located throughout the FPSO handle the process control and process shutdown (CPS) I/O, while two other 90-70s control HVAC systems for the fore and aft of the FPSO.

A separate pair of 90-70s handles the fire-and-gas (FandG) systems, while a hard-wired Silvertech system handles the emergency shut-down (ESD).

These PLCs on the FPSO act as the interface for all the I/O for the topside's process control and safety systems.

The CPS, FandG and ESD systems are all integrated within the new HMI/Scada system.

The development was based on Silvertech's standard approach to systems that require redundancy to fulfil safety and high-integrity control demands.

All the graphics had to be replaced and the point database had to be updated.

The total number of points is in the region of 50,000 with around 5,000 hardwired I/O.

Thousands of screens had to be developed.

However, with the functionality and ease of development and implementation of Proficy HMI/Scada - Cimplicity, the whole system was developed within the planned six-month timeframe.

The timescale was also supported by the GE Fanuc bundled hardware and software.

The network has an engineering workstation to provide access to the system for software maintenance and a Cimplicity RTD server.

The RTD Server provides a means to process the data stored on the SQL servers in real time to plot trends.

The network is also linked to the onshore corporate LAN via a powerful firewall so that the system can be viewed by authorised personnel via the company intranet.

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