January 22, 2009 - Invensys Process Systems (IPS) signed a multi-million dollar contract with Qatargas, one of the world’s major producers of liquefied natural gas, to complete a major automation upgrade at the Qatar Gas 1 facility in the Qatar Ras Laffan Industrial City.Under the terms of the contract, IPS will upgrade control processors, gateways, local area networks and network security with its Foxboro I/A Series distributed control system (DCS) Version 8, including mesh architecture. “Our goal is to keep our clients’ distributed control systems running at peak performance levels,” said Mohsen Sorour, IPS Business Development Manager. “Qatargas’ existing Foxboro I/A Series DCS system runs versions 6 and 7.
IPS will migrate this nodebus-based system to our latest mesh-based technology, and by retaining existing field wiring and system cabinets and using online upgrade procedures, we can ensure that plant downtime is kept to an absolute minimum.” The upgrade will give Qatargas improved compatibility between different generations of system components at Qatar Gas 1, as well as extend the lifecycle of the overall control system there. “Because the upgrade will be carried out in phases, different generations of products and software will be able to interoperate as one system,” said Jambulingam Balu, Lead I&C Systems Engineer, Qatargas.
“This approach ensures that we can budget for staggered investment cycles whilst extending the life cycle of the control system and in turn enhancing the plant’s performance.”
About Qatargas
Qatargas, the company that is pioneering Qatar’s liquefied natural gas industry, today exports 10 million tons per year (t/y) of LNG to customers in Japan and Spain. However, the company is expanding rapidly and by 2010 expects to be exporting 42 million t/y of LNG to markets in Europe, Asia and North America.
About IPS (Invensys Process Systems)
Invensys Process Systems (IPS), headquartered in Plano, Texas, is a global technology, software and consulting firm leading significant change in process manufacturing, plant optimisation, business operations and enterprise performance. IPS clients are some of the world’s most important industrial organisations — companies that operate large oil refineries; plants that process chemicals, gas, LNG, power, pharmaceutical and minerals; and pulp and paper mills. IPS solutions, used at over 50,000 locations around the globe, include field devices and controls from Foxboro and Triconex, advanced applications from SimSci-Esscor, operations management from Avantis, and the world’s first truly open enterprise control system, InFusion.
The company’s approximately 7,500 employees integrate these capabilities to create solutions that impact and increase efficiency, boost productivity, and accelerate performance. These results help industrial companies run safer, operate more efficiently, and extract useful knowledge from their operations to make faster, better decisions. The Invensys Group is headquartered in London and is listed on the London Stock Exchange (ISYS.L), with approximately 25,000 employees working in 60 countries.