Construction of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility was started in 2002. The facility was commissioned in 2007, and by 2015 Qatargas management recognized that it needed upgrades. The facility’s aging control system was breaking down and had limited hotfix support. And as the facility continued to expand, it ran up against control system capacity constraints.
Al-Shammali presented “Operational Certainty at Qatargas through a DeltaV system upgrade” with Ahmad Hassan Al-Sulaiti, projects management manager and projects execution division manager, Qatargas, and Harish Govindan, engineering manager, Emerson, at the 2019 Emerson Global Users Exchange in Nashville, Tennessee.
Qatargas is the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) producer and a leading exporter, with 183 offshore wells producing 16.5 billion SCF/day. The natural gas is liquefied in 14 LNG trains, including six “mega-trains,” each processing 14 megatons per year (MTPA). The facility also has two helium refineries and produces sulphur, natural gas liquids, ethane and field condensate along with LNG and helium.
“Virtualization is a preferred innovation. We now have plenty of room for expansion, and increased availability through monitoring and a more reliable system.” Jassim Al-Shamali of Qatargas described the successful control system modernization project at the world’s largest LNG facility.
Qatargas is always striving to be in the top quartile in efficiency, reliability and customer satisfaction, and measures itself against the rest of the industry. “Where the current industry ‘Efficient and Reliable Operations’ average score is 94.9, Qatargas is currently at 95.95, and is targeting 98,” Al-Shamali said.
To achieve those goals, “We started in 2015 on an upgrade project with the understanding that, for operational excellence, we need system integrity. Our effort was built around that,” said Emerson’s Govindan.
The LNG trains were reaching the current system’s capacity of 120 nodes, and with continuing expansion and debottlenecking, the facility needed more capacity. “So, we split the system into two zones, but kept it in the same cabinet space as we were space-constrained,” Govindan said. “We adopted virtualization—the way to go today—for all assets, both off- and onshore.” They also upgraded the controls and added new cybersecurity to meet the new policies; new backup and recovery systems; and health monitoring for widely dispersed assets, including wellheads.
The two zones each use four domain controllers and 12 host blade servers. In all, 144 controllers were replaced and upgraded, 149 workstations were replaced, and 326 switches and eight firewalls were installed and configured. The upgrade involved about 37,000 hours of project execution.
The project was completed during a 7-1/2-day shutdown in 2017. To accommodate other shutdown activities, the control system upgrade was completed in 3-1/2 days. “We did all those changes and trained the operators in 3-1/2 days, with no safety incidents and no loss of visibility,” Govindan said, adding, “Many people contributed to making this project a success,” including Emerson engineers, equipment OEMs, local vendors and contractors, as well as employees of Qatargas.
“It was a big leap for Qatargas people to go from what they had to what they have. It had to be seamless, with no culture shock,” Govindan said. “It took us two years to get ready, to run the simulations and go through all the what-ifs, FAT, etc.”
Since then, then number of machines has gone up in the same footprint. The two zones eliminate single-point failures and provide redundancy. The offshore wellheads are equipped with virtualized DeltaV, and run unmanned.
“Virtualization eases backups,” said Al-Shamali. Patch management helps the facility meet industry cybersecurity requirements, as does system hardening: separating business from plant systems with one-way communication through data diodes, etc.
“Virtualization is a preferred innovation,” said Al-Shamali. “We now have plenty of room for expansion, and increased availability through monitoring and a more reliable system.”