Safeguarding the Most Valuable Asset in Critical Sour Facilities

Abstract

Abstract The relevance is on South of Oman operating critical sour fields with high pressure (500- 1000bar), H2S, CO2 up to 10% and 25% respectively. The field operations team, maintenance personnel, contractors, vendors conduct their activities with proper PPE adhering to safe operating procedures. However, during emergency, there is always a challenge to track, reach out and respond to people within Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ) extending to 100's of Sq.Km. This paper highlights the challenges in Emergency Response process - release of H2S gas cloud and the solution by embracing the digital technologies during these "mission critical" operations A project had been taken on board to address the above-mentioned Emergency response challenges for real time tracking of all workforces including contractors within EPZ area and respond in a timely manner. Four key critical sour operating facilities with different complexities, infrastructure, and aging order had been considered. Company together with solution supplier had selected a cloud connected personal gas monitoring device with real time location tracking, voice over capability and multi gas sensors after thorough evaluation of sensor compatibility, Compliance to standards, Data security, Total Cost of Ownership and Deployment Staircase. Implementation had been mapped adhering the baseline stipulated in corporate Emergency Response Procedure including the mitigation controls Different valid observations are recorded from the team travelling to sour wells / Manifolds scattered at remote locations with distance ranging from 20 km to 80 km from the central processing Facility and field operating personnel working in High pressure, sour Gas Injection compressors with discharge pressure up to 450barg. The application has been scaled to cover the red zones as well yellow zones for tracking people in Central processing Facility. Well defined feedback strategy based on Bottom-Up approach, sessions with super users, Dynamic scenarios as part of routine emergency drill with the front-line team together with key stakeholders had resulted in enhancements along the product roll out. Flexibility in accessing the application from control room, Local Emergency Control Centre through office domain Network and the data visualization were proven to compliment the present emergency response capabilities. Ultimately, the team could react, respond, and reach out to people during H2S gas release scenario in a timely manner The team has adopted Industry 4.0 digital transformation - cloud hosted Software as a Service application with real time data available at endpoints, accessible through Role bases access control privileges. The Post Implementation Review results on sensors, application, effect on work process and culture will be part of the detailed presentation