American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.
A large North Sea Platform may have many diverse operations associated with it. These include drilling, production, storage, custody transfer, a pipeline operation, and generation of a significant block of electric power. Superimposed on these is a comprehensive safety system and the monitoring of environmental factors and structural integrity. There is a need to coordinate these operations through an information system. The thrust of this paper is not toward describing the functions in detail but rather to suggest a common building block, which has computer intelligence, to serve all the functions. The specific needs of a particular function is implemented by a particular function is implemented by a stored program.
Automation or supervisory control of oil fields and pipelines has been in general use for approximately 15 years. This is a system whereby control of valves, motors, shutdown systems, etc. are performed by local controllers. performed by local controllers. Located at a well head area or at a piece of process equipment is a box called an RTU process equipment is a box called an RTU (Remote Terminal Unit). All status information on valve positions, turbine meter readings, and continuous readings from flow and pressure transducers are digitized and sent over a telemetry link to a master station in a central control location. Special displays of lights, indicators and recorders give the operator knowledge of every well head area and process equipment. The next logical step is to attach a computer to the master station. See Figure 1. This permits certain automatic operations to take place like:
Periodic scan of all inputs for alarm status.
Recording in memory, perhaps every 5 minutes, flow, pressure, and temperature readings to enable the generation of reports.
Set up automatic tests of wells.
