[FUN] Utilisation of Fieldbus on FPSO's

[Stephen Mitschke]

Ian,As an outsider I'm following the FUN discussions on the how's, when's andwhy's of the implementation of Foundation Fieldbus with a lot of interest,however I have not seen any discussion on the utilisation of Fieldbus onFPSO's (Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading vessels). Unfortunatelythese sort of operations seem to be rather conservative and will stillselect the relative secure "analogue" approach rather then the "digital"one.I wonder if any of your readers do have experience with installing /operating Fieldbus on an FPSO. I'm very keen to know and obtain somefeedback.RegardsMart LouisseBluewater Energy Services

[Stephen Mitschke]

Ian,Regarded to the use of FF on FPSO's, we here at PETROBRAS up to now havethis technology installed in offshore production platforms only, but we donot see much difference in applying FF on one of our FPSOs the moment wehave an opportunity for doing so, or if we do decide to start adoptingdefinitely this technology to be in charge of control functions in thefuture for our new projects. Up to now since we are still evaluating itsbenefits, we are restricting its use to retrofittings and smaller units.The reason for saying we do not see much difference is because in our case,even when analogue instrumentation is used, digital networks are necessaryto interlink field located RTUs to the remote PLCs' CPUs. Thus, we havedigital treatment in both cases. Mitigation of an occasional network isachieved by specifying redundant digital buses.Regards.Carlos HenriquePETROBRAS/E&P

[Stephen Mitschke]

I'm not aware of any FPSO. However, check put this platform:http://ethernet.industrial-networking.com/articles/i04_oilplatform.aspJonas Berge, Smar

[neidinger]

Mart Louisse:

With a quick review I was not able to identify an FPSO where we have implemented Foundation Fieldbus; however, the justification for using other fieldbuses has been applied to FPSOs. We have implemented smart field devices and bus communications on many platforms and at least one FPSO recently.

As for Foundation Fieldbus, we have several offshore installations with customers such as Gaz de France, Shell, Statoil and Wintershall.

http://www.honeywell.com/mediakit/announcement_details.jsp?rowID=155&docID=4141&catID=3

http://www.honeywell.com/mediakit/announcement_details.jsp?rowID=149&docID=4154&catID=3

As with all FF installations, the benefits can be realized in what is done with the data collected, how control is implemented, how the installation is handled, etc.

Best regards,
Eric

[scirocco_torc]

For the record, Woodside Energy are utilising Fieldbus on their Enfield FPSO to be located off Exmouth in Western Australia.

[Mike ONeill]

The BP FPSO Greater Plutonio is using fieldbus: Hawke have supplied a considerable quantity of fieldbus device couplers via package vendors for use on this project, using Profibus-PA devices.