Honeywell announced it has been awarded a new contract by Wintershall Noordzee for the implementation and delivery of its Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS) at Wintershall’s new offshore gas production facility in the United Kingdom’s part of the North Sea, Wingate.
Honeywell first began its relationship with Wintershall in 1998 through its installation of its control and safety systems at Wintershall’s A6-A gas production platform in the German North Sea.
Once completed, the fully automated Wingate platform will extract gas from a recently discovered gasfield within the North Sea, increasing Wintershall’s presence in the region. Wingate will also become the latest platform to be controlled remotely from Wintershall’s new central control room (CCR) located in Den Helder, Netherlands, as part of the company’s continued expansion of its remote operations.
Wintershall currently operates 26 platforms in the North Sea, 18 of which are operated remotely from the Den Helder CCR facility.
The decision to migrate the majority of its platforms to a remotely operated model has allowed Wintershall to maximise productivity and flexibility throughout its network of offshore platforms, while reducing operating costs through the centralisation of resources, according to Honeywell.
Honeywell said its Experion PKS was selected by Wintershall due to its Distributed Server Architecture (DSA) allows multiple Experion systems to operate as one within a single unit, site or enterprise. The complete network can also be monitored centrally through one system, without duplication of databases or displays.
“We have a great working relationship with Honeywell and its Experion PKS solution has already played an important part in our move to centralise North Sea operations since it controls both our Den Helder CCR as well as the new generation offshore platforms,” Jan Hartman, production superintendent, Wintershall Noordzee. “When it came to deciding on a technology partner for our new Wingate facility, Honeywell was the natural choice.”
“As Wintershall continues to develop its activities in the North Sea, the efficient automation of these sites has become very important,” said Elgonda La Grange, regional general manager, Honeywell. “Experion’s DSA technology makes it a great solution for an organisation such as Wintershall, which wants to look after multiple sites from one main control room. The nature of the DSA network is such that it makes it very easy to add new implementations – such as the one at Wingate – into the main system, helping Wintershall adapt their network as needed and keep a competitive advantage in the market place.”
