Hydro’s e-Ops

Norsk Hydro’s upstream arm, about to be subsumed by Statoil, opens a new e-operations center to monitor offshore production systems.

Norsk Hydro, whose oil and gas business is being acquired by Statoil, has made a plethora of deals and announcements of late—perhaps the most interesting being the opening of a new ‘eOperations’ center at Sandsli, Norway, that will allow land-based specialists to monitor control systems and rotating machinery offshore.

Jacobsen

Hydro director Rolf Jacobsen said, ‘Use of new technology and work processes will help us keep equipment running constantly. This will contribute to considerable reductions in lost oil and gas production. From Sandsli, we monitor 30 gas turbines, 35 gas compressor trains and over 100 large pumps on a daily basis.’

1.6 mmbbl loss

Equipment failure can lead to major production loss—last year, Hydro’s ten largest production losses amounted to some 1.6 million barrels. Another operations room monitors 54 fiscal metering stations on Hydro’s platforms and at the Sture terminal, provides better quality surveillance and maintenance planning of the the metering stations. It’s not clear what will become of eOps when Hydro’s oil and gas business is subsumed by Statoil..

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