TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI as a Key Component of the Negusneft Oil Company’s Control System

Since 1993, the Negusneft Oil Company is exploring the Varyngskoye oil field (Western Siberia, Russia), providing prospecting, extraction, transportation, storage and sales of oil and oil products.  Actually Negusneft Oil Company is equipped with high-tech equipment: most advanced control instruments, modern measurement, monitoring and computer controlled remote control systems.

Before TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI control system was implemented, the automation at the Negusneft Oil Company’s was local. At that time, the most advanced control systems was an oil filed remote control system operating under MS DOS. Some attempts were made to implement a QNX-based SCADA system in control of the booster pump stations and of the group pumping stations, however all of them failed. The company had no skilled staff for development of control system; therefore, a system integrator a Moscow-based company “AT” was hired. The selection of a software platform for the control system development was easy. All competing software products having the same functionality as TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI were too much expensive. As a control hardware, the AT company used the M2000 PLC .

The first SCADA/HMI TRACE MODE based control system was launched at Negusneft in 1999. The system provided automation of one booster pump station for the Varyngskoye oil field. One programmable controller М2000 has provided the data transfer from 45 digital and 55 analogue gauges. One booster pump stations HMI workstation was used. Reports were generated by means of a simplest program written in Visual Basic, which obtained data over 40 main channels from a TRACE MODE Real Time Monitor (RTM) via DDE-interface and generated a report in the Excel format every two hours. The booster pump station personnel sent the report files by modem to the oil and gas production department headquarters.

The first control system has shown to the engineers of the automation department the advantages of modern HMI. For the first time, booster pump station operators have seen the whole process on a single monitor screen, and it has become much easier to control the process. There was no more need to go out from the warm operator room to the Siberian frost every time the operators needed to know the pressure gauge reading. One TRACE MODE HMI screen of the booster pump station control system has substituted the wall-size rack of old-fashioned control equipment with numerous indicators, facilitating the understanding of the process technology by the young employees.

After a half-year of trial operation, the Negusneft Oil Company’s management has decided to use SCADA TRACE MODE as a basis of the corporate control system.

As a next step the TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI software was purchased for the oil field remote control system. In doing so, the company’s management being inspired by the successes of the previous year has not stopped at buying only TRACE MODE Real Time Monitor (RTM) for 32000 channels. The new order included NetLink Light – the network graphic HMI console, an additional development system (professional version) and the TRACE MODE Documentation server.

The new oil field remote control system has superseded the old DOS system with new М2000 controllers. The TRACE MODE RTM laid the basis of the control system. A master controller (dispatcher) connected to the TRACE MODE RTM, performs polling of all remote facilities via radio channel: 

• group measurement units;
• pipe header units;
• power-actuated stock – a group of several ECP /electric centrifugal pumps.

In spite of a low data exchange speed over a radio channel being equal to 2400bps, one has managed to achieve a considerable reduction of the poll cycle due to data flow optimisation and use of the group poll technology as compared with the old remote control system, which polled parameters individually. As a result, the dispatcher warning speed at remote objects has risen approximately fivefold.

Together with commissioning of the new oil field remote control system, Negusneft Oil Company engineers have learned to use various TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI features. Having learned to link screen graphics to the gauge outputs, the automation department people have been taken this to such extent that at the end of each watch the Negusneft Oil Company’s management obtained new screen copies of graphical forms. As expected, it has accelerated implementation of the TRACE MODE  Supervisor module. A little bit later, the enthusiasm of automation service employees moved to Template Editor and Documentation Server.

The Negusneft Oil Company’s management has welcomed the desire of operators to rise the professional skills and upon commissioning of a new TRACE MODE based oil field remote control system, two of them has passed training at the AdAstrA’s Training Center. The implementation of the next control system of group pump station, has already been performed without assistance of system integrator company, but by the enterprise own employees.

Besides the evident growth of the number of automated objects, the training has also resulted in the control systems quality improvement. Readings of every gauge was visualised in the form of trends and tables, that revealed some drawbacks in the equipment installation, e.g. lack of grounding, informational cable crosstalk entailing false alarms and pickups, bounce of analogue signals, mutual interference of gauges – all that has been brought to light and has been corrected. Finally, the new remote control system “has started speaking”, i.e. a voice message has been prepared for every emergency situation, whereby the operator has been released from watching the monitor continuously.

At the present time, all vitally important oil production facilities at Negusneft Oil Company’s enterprises are automated using TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI; a further system build-up is being carried out along with commissioning of new objects, since an active drilling and construction are under way in the region.

During four years of operation of the TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI based remote control control system at the Negusneft Oil Company, its reliability, ease of use and at the same time its great functionality and scalability have been proved. Now Negusneft is planning to gain a new level in automation - to integrate the HMI and remote control systems with EAM and production planning systems.