Maintenance Technology June 2017 - 36

INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS

Remote Monitoring Takes
Hold in Oil & Gas

Grant Gerke
Contributing Editor

Pioneer Energy
Inc. provides a
turnkey service
that captures flared
gases at the field
site by way of a
Mobile Alkane Gas
Separator (MAGS)
unit, separate from
the well-drilling
application.

igital transformation applications in
2017 are moving fast and taking diverse
forms. Many industries, such as oil and
gas and petrochemical, are quickly acting
on better data-acquisition models so operators can
move toward online condition-based monitoring for
pumps and motors.
According to Brian Atkinson, a consultant with
the Industry Solutions Group of Emerson Process
Management (emersonprocess.com, Shakopee, MN),
pumps account for an estimated 7% of maintenance
costs of a plant or refinery. "While a pump failure in
a refinery may only affect one part of a process," he
said, "pump failures in an oil field can shut down a
well or pipeline,"
During the oil-market boon, operators took
run-to-failure approaches with pumps and motors,
and didn't install cost-prohibitive wiring
to monitor such units in the field.
Wireless-network-standardization
efforts over the last decade, however,
have provided operators the ability
to implement condition-monitoring
strategies and avoid costly shutdowns that may seem necessary in
lower-price markets.
As an example, Atkinson
pointed to a white paper, titled,
"Beyond Switches for Pump
Monitoring," from Emerson
Automation Solutions. It
details how oil and gas
processing facilities
can use cost-effective
transmitters to provide
continuous condition
monitoring and a richer
data set on in-the-field
pumps. Among other
things, it recognizes
the American Petroleum Institute (API)
The Internet of Things is changing the reliability
and maintenance world. Keep up to date with
our ongoing coverage of this exciting use
of data and technology at bit.ly/mtIiot.

36 |

MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY

Standard 682 that provides a roadmap for achieving
continuous monitoring with IIoT-based solutions.
This standard defines piping plans for pumps to assist
processing facilities for the selection of the type of
sensors and controls for pump auxiliary-seal flush
systems.
The white paper (bit.ly/mtiot003) illustrates that
traditional mechanical switches provide on/off data,
while transmitters can communicate a broad range of
measured variables and facilitate remote configuration, calibration, and diagnostics. With the transition
to transmitters in the field, management can reduce
field-maintenance service trips and reallocate those
services to other resources.
A prime example of the process industry's
move to continuous, remote monitoring is Pioneer
Energy's captured gas-flaring application for remote
shale fields. The Lakewood, CO-based corporation
(pioneerenergy.com) provides a turnkey service
that captures flared gases at the field site by way of
a Mobile Alkane Gas Separator (MAGS) unit that's
separate from the well-drilling application.
Oil-and-gas-shale producers have usually thought
of flared gas as a waste product. Remote monitoring,
though, gives them the ability to resell or use it to
power drilling operations wherever they may be.
In Pioneer Energy's case, that means being able to
monitor the gas-separation unit in a central control
room hundreds of miles away from well sites.
Pioneer Energy still provides technician services
for minor maintenance of its remote MAGS units.
According to the company, it uses Opto 22's groov
mobile monitoring to provide field technicians monitoring and control onsite through mobile devices.
"Our service technicians in the oilfield have 4G
AT&T tablets that link to the groov server, which is
connected to the OPC server," said Andrew Young,
lead controls engineer at Pioneer Energy Services.
"They can see real-time operations as they're enroute
to a site to do a service call."
Pioneer Energy's gas-separator service is the
embodiment of a new business outcome enabled by
advanced sensor networks in a legacy environment.
These types of small optimization strategies have
begun to take hold in the oil and gas industry, and
should be the rule instead of the exception going
forward. MT

ggerke@maintenancetechnology.com
JUNE 2017

http://www.bit.ly/mtiot003 http://www.emersonprocess.com http://www.pioneerenergy.com http://www.bit.ly/mtIiot

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Maintenance Technology June 2017