With a capacity of 7 million barrels per day, Abqaiq complex is the largest oil processing facility in the world. It was built in the 1940s when the Abqaiq field was discovered by what was back then the Saudi American Oil Company, or Saudi Aramco as it is known today.
Abqaiq is the main oil processing center for Arabian Extra Light (AXL) and Arabian Light (AL) crude oils and produces natural gas liquids (NGL) as a by-product for Saudi Aramco’s daily oil processing activities. Located north of the vast Saudi Arabian Empty Quarter, the second largest sand desert in the world, the complex handles crude pumped from the Ghawar field. It is linked to the Shaybah oil field through a 395-mile pipeline and to the export terminal in Yanbu through a natural gas liquid pipeline. Abqaiq’s operations represent the most extensive and sophisticated oil exploration, production and exportation networks in the Kingdom.
“For a complex of this size, an involuntary shutdown would mean great losses in production and would negatively impact the company,” begins Majed Al-Khalis, control systems engineer at Abqaiq Plants, Saudi Aramco.
In 2008, Abqaiq Plants team recognised potential challenges on the horizon. Despite being equipped with one of the best and most advanced automation systems for its time, the technology in place was about to become obsolete if its main components were not replaced on time.
“In addition, these systems would no longer have technical support or training,” Al-Khalis explains.
After conducting several studies, the team decided an upgrade and migration cutover of the plants’ automation system was needed. Abqaiq Plants team began to plan the process of upgrading the existing Emerson Provox DCS, Triplex Regent ESD systems, and burner management systems to the latest release of Emerson’s DeltaV DCS, SIS & BMS. The team began the project in October, 2011 with a planned completion date of November, 2015.
“Although on-budget and on-schedule cutovers at a processing plant of this size do not happen often, the project team completed the cutover activities two months ahead of schedule by end of September, 2015,” Al-Khalis said.
Large Complex Plans for a Hot Cutover
The programme was distributed over 20 locations and included upgrades to 325 controllers, 105 workstations, and 42 network devices. The entire automation system at all three plant divisions — oil, natural gas liquids (NGL) and utilities — was overhauled, and Emerson’s existing distributed control system was replaced with its latest release DeltaV.
“Success meant not having a single interruption to plant operations, and the team had to minimise the shutdown time for some of the risk areas that have tight operations. As a result of that, a hot cutover approach was chosen,” explains Al-Khalis.
To overcome project challenges and complete the project successfully with zero operational impact, the team decided to focus on three areas — human resource development, efficient testing procedures, and streamlined technologies.
Human Resource Development Before starting the project, Abqaiq Plants management took proactive steps to develop a qualified team that included a mix of experienced and new personnel across different project disciplines including automation, process, electrical, and communication.
Several engineers, technicians, and operators were sent to vendor courses to increase their knowledge of the new systems. In addition, the project team simulated new systems process and operation scenarios in Abqaiq advanced technology center. The simulation helped to ensure new systems readiness and familiarised plants engineers and technicians with them.
The team participated in several project activities and tests including factory acceptance tests (FAT) which increased the competency level of all team members, Al-Khalis said.
Test Procedures
To assure readiness and correctness of the new system and to achieve a smooth cutover, Abqaiq Plants experienced engineering and operation teams developed testing procedures.
Detailed cutover sequence and contingency plan documents were developed to manage cutover critical activities and predict all possible scenarios during cutover and restoration procedures. The team also developed a plan to relocate the old DCS to a temporary cabinet and keep it running to control the plant. This approach helped to optimise the shutdown period for critical risk areas such as AXL shippers and steam production plants from one week to two hours. It also enabled a fast fallback strategy to the old system, in case of new systems failure, Al-Khalis explained.
Streamlined Technologies
The Abqaiq project team took advantage of the upgrade project to implement current technologies in the system network, monitoring, and security. These technologies simplified the cutover, project execution, and troubleshooting.
For example, zoning and subnets were used to segregate different control rooms’ networks. This segregation of networks and systems into unique areas enhanced system security. It also helped to isolate traffic and errors for easier issue tracing and network troubleshooting. In addition, a centralised management system was used to collect system events and key performance indicators (KPI).
Abqaiq Plants team came up with an innovative design to enhance the cutover period of some plant networks through installing a parallel connections to old and new systems’ networks. The innovative idea enabled the team to test the new system while maintaining old system connections. This method decreased plant downtime period from a potential 72 hours to zero and allowed for better system testing and recovery. In addition, to stabilise the plant sooner on the new system, critical loops were tuned with the help of Emerson consultants.
The project team also implemented a centralised patch management system to install security patches and antivirus updates. The centralised patch management system enabled the use of Guardian Support, which provided Emerson technology connections, and ensured project team would discover system issues if any arose.
Not only did it help to mitigate Abqaiq system security and patch issues, but it also provided the team insights into what Emerson learned from other sites’ projects.
Business Results and Lessons
Combining efficient planning with methods and technology enabled the project to finish ahead of schedule and under budget, while the resulting reduction in man-hours led to lowering cost and gave the team more time to observe the new system and close some exception items, Al-Khalis said.
“Saudi Aramco employees, Emerson engineers, and contractors worked together collaboratively with support of Abqaiq Plant management as one team to achieve the goals of the project safely with not even a single negative impact on production.
“The young plant employees have been empowered to lead critical activities. The education and resulting confidence delivered several innovations and noticeable cost avoidances. In essence, Abqaiq Plants management capitalised on the development of people to ensure present project success and prepare for future system support,” he added. In the future, says Al-Khalis, Abqaiq Plants will plan to upgrade its existing IO cards to those of the DeltaV system. In addition, the plant team will work to enable several enhanced DeltaV features such as Advanced Process Control (APC).
Optimisation projects like these are becoming more and more common at Saudi Aramco. As the energy giant forges ahead with plans to become a formidable player in both oil & gas and chemicals, keeping abreast with technology will prove key in deciding whether it succeeds or fails.
