05-06-2012

Shell to take ownership of the data management at its Pearl gas to liquids plant in Qatar

The engineering mega-project Pearl Gas to Liquids (GTL) plant, an $18 billion-$19 billion development by Qatar Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell, reaches a new milestone this month, as Shell gets ready to manage the handover of instrumentation data. The engineering instrumentation database comprises about 150,000 loops, 350,000 instruments and 90,000 data sheets.
 
The central engineering solution, built on Intergraph’s SmartPlant® Instrumentation and hosted by Intergraph, helped enforce project standards and best practices among multiple project contractors. SmartPlant Instrumentation provides a single source of plant instrumentation data and includes interfaces with most complementary solutions, such as most automation vendors, for easy access and data consistency, delivering increased safety, quality, efficiency and productivity.
 
Under the project management contract, approximately 25 contractors from France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States were engaged in the design of the plant, each of them providing engineering input during the Front End Engineering and Design phase of the project. Overall, the project has collected some 15 million items of data and nearly 500,000 documents and ensured their proper delivery into the company’s GAME (Global Asset Management Excellence) program.
 
During the design and construction phase, the environment, which operates via Citrix, served approximately 200 users who connect via the Internet and have access to the instrumentation database 24/7. Since the inception of the project, engineering software solution company Intergraph has been responsible to design, implement and operate the hosted SmartPlant Instrumentation service for the duration of the design phase and now the time has come to hand it over to Shell.
 
Gerhard Sallinger, Intergraph Process, Power & Marine president, said: “Shell is one of the leading oil and gas companies in the world and is well-respected in the industries it serves. Its adoption of SmartPlant Instrumentation for one of its largest projects, in addition to the expanded use of Intergraph solutions, underscores the value these solutions bring to our customers and their clients.”

Pearl GTL, based in Ras Laffan, Qatar, is the world’s largest gas to liquids plant and was the largest construction site ever in the oil and gas industry during construction phase. The first commercial shipment from the Pearl GTL was achieved on June 13, 2011. The plant converts natural gas into high quality fuels and liquid products.

When operating at full capacity in mid-2012, Pearl GTL will convert 1.6 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas into 140 thousand barrels per day of GTL products (gasoil, kerosene, base oils Naphtha and Normal Paraffins) and 120,000 barrels of natural gas liquids and ethane. The plant will process approximately 3 billion barrels of oil-equivalent over its lifetime from the North field, which stretches from Qatar’s coast out into the Gulf and contains more than 900 trillion cubic feet of gas.