Invensys has announced it has won two major contracts in the Gulf, one relating to a fertiliser factory in Oman and the other relating to a gas plant in the UAE.
In the Oman contract it will supply a mesh network-based Foxboro automation system for use on a major, world-class fertiliser project in Oman, promoted by the Suhail Bahwan Group.
Currently under construction at Sohar, the $638 million Sohar Fertiliser project of Sohar International Urea & Chemical Industries SAOC includes a 2,000 mtpd (metric tonnes per day) ammonia plant and a 3,500 mtpd urea synthesis and granulation plant along with related utilities and offsite facilities. It is one of the world’s largest private sector greenfield fertiliser projects and is being built under an EPC contract by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) of Japan.
Invensys will supply a Foxboro I/A Series Version 8 process control system. “This uses advanced commercial communications technologies in robust industrial configurations that will give Sohar Fertiliser a high-availability, self-healing mesh process control network backbone capable of connecting thousands of stations at very high speeds,” an Invesnsys spokesman said.
“The I/A Series process control system will be integrated with a Triconex Tricon emergency shutdown (ESD) system. The Tricon fault-tolerant controller is based on aTriple-Modular Redundant (TMR) architecture. TMR employs three isolated, parallel control systems and extensive diagnostics integrated into one system. It uses two-out-of-three voting to provide high integrity, error-free, uninterrupted process operation with no single point of failure.”
For the Abu Dhabi project, Invensys Process Systems has been selected to provide advanced Scada (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems for Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Ltd (Gasco), which is managing the Habshan gas plant expansion project, OGD-III, on behalf of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc).
Located in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, the Habshan complex is one of the largest gas processing plants in the world. The expansion is designed to process an additional 1,306 MMSCFD of condensate-rich gas at the Habshan complex.
“The new systems will be used to monitor and control all gas wells and remote manifold stations associated with the Habshan complex. This includes the replacement and expansion of existing Scada systems with the latest Foxboro Scada technology,” the spokesman said.
As part of the Scada contract awarded by Eastern Bechtel Co Ltd, the EPC contractor appointed by Gasco for the project, Invensys will provide professional services for project management, engineering, design, development, integration, testing, and on-site support, as well as training services for engineering and operating personnel, he said. This set of professional services brings together the worldwide Invensys Scada resources, implemented at the Invensys Scada centre in Rome, Italy, in the UAE, and on site at the Gasco Habshan complex.
“The new Scada project is designed to meet Gasco’s main goals of maximising the reliability and availability of gas well production and the inherent requirement for frequent cyclic polling of all critical production data,” said the spokesman. “To meet this need, extensive redundancy will be implemented throughout the system, from the intersystem communications and remote terminal units (RTUs), to the UHF radio data transmission system. In addition to optimal system availability, the high reliability of Foxboro Scada data handling will help Gasco achieve safety and environmental goals for processes within the plant expansion. Invensys is working closely with Bechtel, the OGD III project EPC contractor. Overall project completion is scheduled for April 2008,” the spokesman added.
The Invensys Scada architecture will employ a Wonderware kernel specifically configured for oil and gas applications and utilising the award winning InTouch software as the foundation for the human machine interface (HMI).
