September 2, 2009-- ABB’s process-wide solution for the StatoilHydro Snøhvit gas field and Melkøya liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Norway went onstream in 2007. Snøhvit is a highly complex installation in which gas is extracted from three fields 143 kilometers offshore in the Barents Sea, piped to the onshore terminal, processed into LNG, stored in tanks and loaded onto LNG carriers for transportation to consumer markets in Europe and the United States. The core products of the plant are liquefied natural gas (LNG; 5.67 billion m3/year), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG; up to 250,000 tons/year) and condensate (up to 900,000 m3/year).
ABB provided the subsea and topside automation systems that control production in the gas fields and monitor the pipelines through which the gas is pumped onshore. A staggering number of signals run through ABB systems at any given time - some 40,000 in the electrical control system and more than 30,000 in the safety and process automation system. Both systems are integrated for topside control and visualization in the combined safety and automation system for the onshore LNG plant, which is the most critical part of the entire facility.
An equally vast ABB electrical control and supervision system integrates and communicates with the thousands of ABB motors, switches, contactors, circuit breakers and drives as well as third party equipment across the onshore liquefaction plant and LNG terminal. The ABB Power Management System monitors, controls and protects the entire plant and prevents, among other things, the effects of a relatively minor fault from cascading into a multi-million-dollar shutdown. ABB is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 120,000 people.
