Intelligent Plant Launches Digital Solution to Help Prevent Major Equipment Failures Offshore

Working in partnership with the Oil & Gas Technology Centre (OGTC), Intelligent Plant have begun work on an innovative digital project with Nexen Petroleum U.K. Limited (Nexen), a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNOOC Limited, which aims to provide key operating staff the ability to monitor and prevent plant trips and failures, and demonstrate the resulting gains, thanks to a new cloud-based application called SEER.

Intelligent Plant specialise in the performance monitoring of offshore equipment and processes through analysis and visualisation of real-time data, and in the management of alarm data. This monitoring takes place via a range of industrial apps, which are also shared on their own Industrial App Store, where they can be accessed by the oil and gas industry.

Their team of data scientists and engineers created SEER, which incorporates various data analytic methods for use in diagnosis of major equipment failures, to allow the end user to modify operational, maintenance or engineering practice to monitor and prevent future failures on a platform. Across the industry, equipment failures have been identified as a major cause of downtime, and it is hoped that the successful implementation of SEER will increase production efficiency and provide significant cost savings.

Steve Aitken, Consultant Director, Intelligent Plant said “The partnership between Nexen, the OGTC and Intelligent Plant will allow the wider industry to see the advantage that can be gained with these unique technologies. Nexen’s historic data and engineering expertise, Intelligent Plant’s software, and the OGTC’s delivery model that ensures that we all learn from each other, and together we can demonstrate the impact that this digital solution offers.”

Stephen Ashley, Digital Transformation Solution Centre Manager at the Oil & Gas Technology Centre said: “We’re delighted to be working with Intelligent Plant to tackle the industry wide problem of unnecessary downtime that is caused by the inability to prevent major equipment trips. There are many operators out there that are already embracing and benefiting from the application of data analytics, but we need to continue to work further with industry and use digital technologies to drive improved performance and reduce the cost of doing business.”

This collaboration is due to run from October 2018 to October 2019, and it is hoped that on completion, results, learnings and benefits will be shared with the wider industry. The results will also be used to look at how the technology can benefit a range of sectors including health, defence, security, and other process industries.