The Important Roles Of Automation In The Oil Industry

1. Introduction

Automation has played a very important role in production industries, especially in the Oil, Gas and Petrochemicals industries. The world economy has been developing with oil as its lifeblood for over a hundred years now. It has been observed that whenever the oil prices increase, the prices of various products also increase. The Oil Industry also through oil production accounts for a large amount of the consumption of energy (as seen in Figure 1).

Figure 1 Global energy producers by fuel type [1] The World Oil Demand has also been increasing consistently (as seen in Figure 2). Figure 2 World Oil Demand [2]
2. Historical Background on Production Processes

2.1 Exploration

Exploration is an iterative process. Oil and

Complete Automated Technology System has paved the way to automated well completion meeting today’s challenges. It uses remote operated or pre-programmed robotics to control various well completion components.

Multiple ‘Pump Jacks’ can now be monitored remotely, allowing improved real time decision making, with the help of Field Production SCADA monitoring and control system.

Pipeline telecontrol system is designed for control and monitoring of process equipment consisting of control and monitoring station, shut off valves units, electrochemical protection station, chambers of startup and reception of cleanup. This will reduce the need to calculate the data manually, which is required to control the pipeline parameters.

3.4 Refining

Automation in refinery has become crucial as the processes in refinery are irreversible. The automation systems are intended for automation of crude oil distillation to produce residual, diesel and gasoline fractions.

The system is used for automation in facilities like:

a. Crude oil preheater
b. Fractionation towers and heat exchangers
c. Pump station
d. Tank farm for crude oil and finished products
e. Loading racks
f. Terminal compressor