Alaskan oil producer ENI Petroleum engaged with Emerson Automation Solutions to improve the reliability and performance of their control valves under extreme arctic environments. In working with Emerson’s analysis team under the company’s Valve Connected Services program, ENI has maintained continued oil production (20k/24K barrels per day) without any unexpected shutdowns due to control valves for 24 straight months.
Since 2015, Emerson’s team of analysis experts – through local business partner PCE Pacific – have been using their company’s automation technology to remotely monitor ENI’s critical control valves at their Nikaitchuq facility, located on the Northern Slope of Alaska, to ensure continued asset health and optimize maintenance protocols. This has helped ENI technicians to keep their valves operating effectively, thereby avoiding unplanned shutdowns that could cost the company millions in lost production.
Critical control valves play a major role in the reliability of ENI’s offshore drilling and onshore oil processing facility, and a process upset due to a failure of a critical control valve can be extremely costly to the company’s bottom line. According to Robin Bogard, ENI’s U.S. operating maintenance supervisor, the extreme arctic conditions at the facility can cause equipment freezes and failures if the process is not continuously moving and critical components are not operating as they should. Thus, one malfunctioning valve at the wrong time can shut the entire operation down until warmer weather allows for proper maintenance and repair.
ENI realized that in order to maintain operation and profitability, it needed to standardize its control valve reliability program to help avoid unplanned events. Developing or hiring a full-time control valve expert was not a realistic solution in this remote location, so ENI turned to Emerson’s Connected Services experts to gain the control valve expertise they needed to support the planned maintenance of critical valves.
Today, ENI’s maintenance team relies on support from Emerson experts to analyze diagnostic data, deliver recommendations, and support the planned maintenance of control valves at their North Slope oil production facility. With remote diagnostic tools, ENI and Emerson monitor 25 of the most critical valves for signal, friction, deviation, configuration and supply pressure, and collaborate on recommended repairs using ENI’s work order management tools. This allows ENI's limited staff to focus their maintenance efforts on other priorities or urgent issues and eliminates the need for an onsite valve expert.
For more information on Emerson’s Connected Services Valve Monitoring, watch this video.