Offshore staff

DELFT, the Netherlands -- Wintershall Noordzee and Dutch technology center TNO have developed a real-time intelligent monitoring system to optimize production from Wintershall’s Dutch North Sea fields.

This is part of the German company’s Remote Control Operations Project, which consolidates gas production control functions into a central control in a new production coordination and control center in Den Helder. This project aims to reduce costs associated with operating the offshore platforms and to improve the effectiveness of the operations, maintenance teams, and HS&E.

The model-based advisory tool uses real-time production monitoring data to optimize production from reservoir to export.

Data are gathered round the clock from process equipment and pre-processed to serve as input for models that continuously monitor the main critical components of the asset from source to export (reservoir, well, chokes, separator, flow lines, compressor).

The tool is being deployed to optimize operations at F16A, a development consisting of five wells on a main platform and a recently built satellite platform on another field. TNO says the tool is used for early event detection, intelligent condition monitoring, and to help operators and engineers make informed decisions to assist operations.

The current monitoring system has been in operation for several months, running around 40 monitoring functions in parallel. It has proven to be robust and easily extendible with new modules, and also flexible in handling platform configuration changes.

09/10/2010