PETRONAS Upstream Improves Operational Performance

Summary

Modern process plants across industries such as oil and gas, chemicals, metals and mining, and power generation are highly automated. A variety of technologies including distributed control systems (DCSs), advanced process control (APC), safety instrumented systems (SISs), and emergency shutdown systems (ESDs) help ensure reliable, safe, and economic process operations. The typical plant invests millions of dollars in acquiring such systems and maintaining them over a lifespan that can run into two or three decades.

However, plant owners cannot take a fit-and-forget approach to their process automation systems. Rather, these need to be managed astutely and supplemented appropriately to ensure that process operations are not compromised, either when operation staff is on site or when they are monitoring and managing a site from a remote location. Issues and problems that can arise include: an excessive and unnecessarily high number of generated process alarms that control room operators cannot address adequately; poor visibility into the extent of SIS bypass activations that can make a facility vulnerable to process safety incidents from disabled safety instrumented functions; and inefficiently and incorrectly running control loops, which can have multiple negative impacts, including economic loss from poor quality product and increased operator interventions and workload.

Against this backdrop, ARC Advisory Group met with executives from Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS), the national oil and gas company of Malaysia, to discuss its strategic initiative for operational excellence, digitalization, and remote operations—code named PRIME Solutions. This initiative leverages the implementation of PAS PlantSuite Integrity across multiple sites in upstream oil and gas production operations. While the implementation is a continuing, multiyear endeavor, the results from the first installations in Malaysia point to significant gains in operational performance, an increased ability to monitor and drive operations remotely, and the achievement of specific objectives related to improved process safety, reliability, and cost-effective process operations.

PETRONAS Upstream business

Along with the Downstream division and the Gas and New Energy division, Upstream is one of the three major operating divisions of PETRONAS. Onshore and offshore exploration and production of oil and gas takes place not only in its home territory but in more than 20 other countries around the world, including Angola, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Gambia, Indonesia, Iraq, Myanmar, and Turkmenistan

In the 2019 financial year (ending 31 December), the Upstream business reported revenues of RM 102.6 billion (U.S. $23.6 billion) and profit after tax of RM 22.2 billion. Other pertinent data for the segment includes: 233 producing fields, 419 offshore platforms, 29 floating facilities, and more than 12,000 staff members.

As with all oil and gas companies hit hard by the oil price crash in the middle of the last decade, PETRONAS was forced to evaluate and retool its business strategies for an era in which consistent and easy profits could no longer be guaranteed by prices of more than $100 for a barrel of oil, and in which regulators and society would pay much greater attention to activity and performance in the area of health, safety, and environment.

In the 2016 annual report, PETRONAS Upstream emphasized its focus on reducing costs and delivering projects with discipline, but also, and significantly, on the need to prioritize safety and asset integrity. The latter aspects were reiterated in the 2017 review when the executive vice president and CEO of the Upstream division stressed the need to “continue to focus on value-driven growth and improve our operational excellence to ensure safety, reliability, and sustainability of the business.”

The PRIME Initiative

The more demanding external environment and renewed corporate focus on operational excellence, remote monitoring, and digitalization led to the development of the PRIME Initiative at PETRONAS Upstream. An acronym for “predictive revitalization of instrument to maximize efficiency,” PRIME focuses on three aspects of plant operations at Upstream’s onshore and offshore installations: safety—improving process safety performance; reliability—improving process control performance; and cost efficiency—improving risk management performance.

Introducing integrity

PlantState Integrity is a modular product that offers a suite of solutions designed to ensure safe, reliable, and cost-effective industrial operations. These solutions address problems commonly faced in process facilities, such as alarms generated at such a frequency that they that cannot be effectively handled by operators, inadequate control and management of safety function bypasses, an unnecessarily high number of control loops in manual mode or in saturation, and operating and safety limits set outside of designed boundaries.

Alarm management

In the market research study on alarm management published in 2019, “Alarm Management for the Process Industries Market Analysis,” ARC notes the generally poor state of alarm management in process plants. The primary contributor is the sheer number of alarms generated per shift, which prevents control room operators from making timely and effective intervention. The main cause of all those alarms is the negligible cost of implementing alarm points with a modern DCS, which means designers have no disincentive to adding yet another alarm to the P&ID configuration.

It is thus important for plants to have an alarm management strategy in place so operators and CoE personnel have the right information to quickly recognize and respond to abnormal situations. This can only be accomplished if they are not overwhelmed by spurious alarms that cause distractions and reduce situational awareness.

To aid end users in this regard, the ISA-18.2 (IEC 62682) industry standard provides a framework for implementing an effective and sustainable alarm management strategy in process plants. It prescribes a life cycle–based approach to alarm management in which alarms are set up, rationalized in a consistent way, and reviewed for effectiveness.

Alarm management software such as the kind available through PlantState Integrity, can help facilitate implementing ISA-18.2-compliant best practices in the plant. This solution caters to key ISA-18.2 aspects, including developing and documenting the alarm philosophy; rationalizing alarms; and alarm monitoring, analysis, and auditing. ARC recommends that end users adopt alarm management software that conforms to the ISA-18.2 standard.

Another key ARC recommendation for end users like PETRONAS is that independent (i.e., nonDCS supplier) alarm management software should tightly integrate to a variety of distributed control systems. Given the heterogeneous nature of DCS installations across PETRONAS Upstream, the capability of PlantState Integrity to support multivendor DCS environments was another important consideration in its selection as the alarm dashboard (PRIME-ADB) in the PRIME project

Safety life-cycle management

To ensure process safety and prevent the type of mass casualties that can potentially occur, notably in the hydrocarbon-based industries, owner/operators commonly implement a safety instrumented system. However, to be effective, the SIS must be managed properly throughout its life cycle, i.e., from initial concept and requirements definition to in-plant operation, maintenance, modification and finally, decommissioning.

A particularly challenging aspect of the safety life cycle is operations and maintenance. SIS design information and safety procedures are often kept in disparate spreadsheets and documents, such that actual operation of the safety system can evolve away from the design intention without it becoming apparent.

There also is often inadequate analysis and hence understanding of safety instrumented function (SIF) activations and SIF bypass activations. While it is often necessary to bypass an SIF during plant upset, startup, SIS testing, and other non-steady-state events, poor record keeping of these actions can mean safety functions are disabled for much longer than intended, potentially compromising safety.

Adoption of software technology that helps industrial end users better manage the safety life cycle is becoming more prevalent. ARC forecasts a significant growth in revenues for life-cycle management software over the next five years, as more companies acknowledge the importance of meeting regulatory requirements and adhering to industry standards and best practices.

Implemented as PRIME-IPM in the PRIME project, PlantState Integrity’s safety life-cycle management module (IPL Assurance) is helping PETRONAS Upstream ensure effective safety instrumented function management at its installations with on-site and remote monitoring. This reduces the risk of a serious process safety incident. A particularly notable result is the ability to track when safety functions are bypassed, by whom, and for how long. Previously bypassed safety functions were not tracked effectively, leading to increased risk. With the PRIME-IPM solution in place, this is no longer the case.

Control loop performance management

Safe, reliable, and cost-effective industrial operations depend on the proper functioning of the thousands of control loops running in the typical process facility. Poor control loop performance can be caused by mechanical wear of control valves, compressor fouling, and neglecting to retune for process changes. The consequences can include an inordinately high number of loops placed in manual control, unnecessary alarm generation, and negative impacts on production output and quality.

PlantState Integrity (i.e., PRIME-CLP in PRIME Project) provides on-site and remote management of control loop performance by continuously monitoring, analyzing, and diagnosing the functioning of control loops. Particularly useful for operators is its ability to prioritize loop performance issues; identify possible contributing issues with controllers, valves or sensors; and recommend corrective actions. With PRIME-CLP, control loop performance is systematically analyzed, tracked, and managed for better process control in general.

Operating boundary management

In process plant operations, it is important that process boundaries are specified, documented adequately, and monitored for any excursions. These boundaries include limits for operating zones, i.e., optimal, acceptable, alarmed, for safety system trips, and for equipment mechanical operation. This information is often kept in different databases and locations, which can make it hard to access and control.

Realizing PRIME value

The PRIME project and implementation of PlantSuite Integrity was still ongoing as of mid-2020, but PETRONAS was already seeing positive results and value creation from its investment in the software solution. For example, at one plant, the new alarm management capability has led to an almost 90 percent reduction in alarm rates, with average alarms per hour per operator falling from 44.5 to 5.6. As well as a clear operator efficiency gain, PETRONAS executives appreciate that an effective alarm management system translates to a real reduction in process safety risk, as critical situations are far more likely to get priority for any necessary remedial action.

Also contributing to improved process safety is the marked reduction of unnecessary SIF bypasses, which fell from 101 to just seven at one offshore platform after the implementation. PRIME-IPM also facilitates the bypass governance model, which PETRONAS Upstream has introduced for a procedural rather than the previously somewhat ad-hoc approach to activating, monitoring, and deactivating safety bypasses.

Meanwhile, with control loop performance management, PETRONAS Upstream is getting highly useful dashboard visibility into control loop elements such as the status of control valves out in the field. For example, the PRIME solution identifies valves that are cycling too frequently, sticking, or are oversized for the process. This information was previously unavailable without running time-consuming control valve tests.

Remote operations visualization is a powerful and, indeed, striking aspect of PRIME. On large display dashboards at the CoE Petronas Digital Collaboration Center (PDCC) area at PETRONAS HQ, hundreds of miles away from the terminals and platforms, the staff gains insight into what is happening (across the four PRIME Solutions) at all those facilities in real time. While each facility also has a PRIME dashboard for insights on its own performance, data analysts at PDCC/HQ prepare weekly reports. These are made available to the facilities for discussion and improvement actions.

Initially, and perhaps not surprisingly, there was concern from individual plants on exposing their operations in this way. In one instance, a plant manager was surprised to be informed by the operational excellence team at HQ of an inordinately large number of safety bypasses activated at his facility. But he took it positively and worked together with the HQ team to reduce the bypasses to help lower the safety risk at the facility. Having all-round visibility on the activities and performance at multiple and often very remote sites allows PETRONAS Upstream to work toward its goal of instilling common best practices and improving collaboration

Looking ahead

The current turbulence in oil prices along with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 situation increases the imperative for oil and gas and other heavy process industry companies to relentlessly seek improvement opportunities that ultimately translate positively to the business bottom line. Taking a methodical and structured approach with its operational excellence, digitalization, and remote operations, PRIME project, PETRONAS Upstream is reaping significant gains across process safety, reliability, and cost efficiency to help meet broader corporate objectives for business profitability and sustainability.

The increasing sophistication and ease of use of digital tools such as PlantState Integrity, adopted by PETRONAS as the technological enabler for the ambitious PRIME project, facilitate opportunities for companies to make such improvements. In addition to driving marked improvements in alarm management and control loop performance, the analytical and visualization capabilities of PlantState Integrity (PRIME Solutions in PETRONAS) increased awareness and understanding of operations, enhanced collaboration, and facilitated the deployment of common best practices across multiple sites.

In PRIME 2.0, PETRONAS Upstream is also planning to deploy additional capabilities with PAS Cyber Integrity. The objective is to boost protection against industrial cybersecurity threats and further improve operating integrity and performance of its oil and gas production facilities.

This article comes from the May 2021 issue of Intech Focus: Process Control and Safety.