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ABB to deliver fastest upstream start-up for Aasta Hansteen gas field

Technology

ABB has announced to deliver ABB Ability™ digital technologies to Equinor’s Aasta Hansteen gas field, located in 1300 metres of water in the Voring area of the Norwegian Sea, 300 km from land

According to ABB, this technology is the world’s fastest start-up that is estimated to save 40 days in commissioning phase by reducing manual interventions by 98 per cent.

“Our teams went through the start-up steps, identified and defined obstacles that needed to be improved, then used our ABB Ability™ System 800xA simulator to do a virtual start-up of the plant,” said Per Erik Holsten, managing director for ABB oil, gas and chemicals.

“At this stage, we made a lot of improvements for starting up and operating the plant. Through automating much of the process we managed to reduce a complex set of manual interventions to just 20, which means we are all set to deliver what we believe to be the world’s fastest start-up at first gas,” Holsten added.

The ABB Ability™ System 800xA simulator aims to minimise risk and reduce the occurrence of unplanned shutdowns while improving safety, productivity and energy savings. It has a control system that is disconnected from the physical process and is instead simulated by a dynamic process model.

“By seamlessly extending the Distributed Control System (DCS), the ABB Ability™ System 800xA provides the same look and feel as the core functional areas. It is a scalable solution in system size, functionality and control system connectivity and is available in three editions: basic, premium and professional,” said the company.

“In the operation of oil and gas projects there are lots of different automation and instrument competencies and disciplines required for the project to run smoothly,” Holsten said.

The ABB AbilityTM System 800xA solution is part of a much bigger suite of digital technologies being implemented by ABB at Aasta Hansteen. These include a condition monitoring system to monitor more than 100,000 maintenance conditions from more than 4,000 pieces of equipment, tools for alarm management and alarm rationalisation, delivery of several safety critical applications, data storage solution to store all alarms and events easily and third-party system integration of essential data traffic.

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