July 04, Kuala Lumpur(Petronas Emerson Exchange):

At a grand setting at Westin Hotel, KL, Mr. Chua Kien Kek, Custodian Engineer, Instrumentation & Control, Petronas, was elaborating on the various industry trends and challenges being faced by Petronas in today’s dynamic environment. Some of the key challenges of O&G Industry that he mentioned during his presentation were:

1. High volatility in Oil & Gas prices requires Petronas to complete projects faster and at the least possible cost.
2. High production targets in spite of diminishing productivity of Petronas' assets demand existing facilities to maximize uptime and minimize unnecessary downtime. This also requires Petronas to ensure that the existing plant assets are more reliable than ever.
3. High costs of energy required facilities to be more energy efficient.
4. Increased Government regulations also demand increased focus on safety in existing plants.
5. At the same time Petronas has to achieve above objectives with fewer resources as a significant proportion of the experienced workforce is retiring and new resources are harder to hire. Mr. Kek also mentioned that it takes about 5 years for new hires to come up to speed.

Rosemount's Smart Measurement Technologies can help Petronas to address many of the above challenges:

1. Rosemount (and Emerson) has the widest range of WirelessHART devices which can enable Petronas to shorten project lifecycle and also reduce cost. Emerson's WirelessHART helps to reduce work and costs involved in laying cables, installing junction boxes, marshalling cabinets etc. They also significantly reduce the DCS I/O requirements and provide more flexibilty in project commissioning, and thereby reduce the time required to adopt last minute changes in projects.
2. Integrated DP Flow and DP Level solutions help to cut down project time as they eliminate the on-field work of installing process connections and impulse tubings. They also help to reducing leak points and improve plant safety. Conditioning Orifice Technology helps to reduce piping straight run requirements and hence reduces project cost and complexity.
3. Rosemount’s Pressure, Temperature, Level and Flow devices provide industry’s highest possible reliability and accuracy in measurement, and enable Petronas to run plants more reliably and closer to their operational limits, thereby increase productivity of existing plants. Various Advanced Diagnostics available on Pressure, Temperature and Level products allow plants to follow predictive maintenance schedules, eliminate unplanned shutdowns in increase plant uptime.
4. Industry leading Annubar minimizes permanent pressure loss and improves energy efficiency. Rosemount’s Smart Acoustic Transmitter (708) helps to monitor leakages steam traps and relief valves to reduce energy losses.
5. Rosemount’s 3051S Pressure Transmitter with Statistical Process Monitoring (SPM) and Loop Integrity Diagnostics make it the safest pressure transmitter in the industry. These diagnostics provide unparalleled insights into the process and also increase the required proof test intervals for SIL2 loops to 10 years! The in-built overfill protection with SIL3 certification available in Raptor radar technology also significantly enhances safety and reliability.
6.  Last but not the least, the Human Centred Design of the user interfaces provides an intuitive experience to the operator which is consistent across all Emerson devices. This makes Emerson’s devices easy to learn and helps reduce training effort for new engineers and brings them up to speed faster.

These are some of the ways in which Rosemount can help address Petronas’ challenges outlined by Mr. Kek. For more details, please visit the Rosemount booth at the Petronas Emerson Exchange venue.