focus biomass — burning wood, burning ambition monitor real

Ventureinto the world of industrial turbomachinery and oil and gas solutions

FocusBiomass — burning wood, burning ambition

MonitorReal time solutions — XHQ users convene in Singapore

SpotlightGoing subsea in Trondheim

Issue 14 | November 2010

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Dear Readers,Oil & Gas Consulting is an underlying motivator and facilitator to many of our clients’ activities and projects. Over the past decade, Siemens has systematically increased its expertise in areas that simplify the immensely complex projects many of our customers have to hold together. As an example, a users’ conference in Singapore was instrumental in promoting the XHQ real-time facility visualization and analysis platform and associated tools. Many of the Oil & Gas majors were there to present real projects, challenges and solutions, some of which are recreated in brief for Venture.

All of our business is underpinned by thorough research and analysis: the challenges of the subsea world are no exception, as Venture discovered when visiting the Subsea Research Center in Trondheim, Norway.

We do not forget our staple business, power generation. This issue features Sweden’s biggest CHP biomass plant, Igelsta, powered by a Siemens steam turbine, and a mam-moth plant extension project successfully delivered in Mymensingh, Bangladesh.

Enjoy reading!

Tom Blades, CEOSiemens Energy Sector, Oil & Gas Division

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Inside

Publisher: Siemens AG, Energy Sector, Oil & Gas, Wolfgang-Reuter-Platz, 47053 Duisburg, Germany Responsible: Dr. Uwe Schütz Editorial team: Lynne Anderson (Head), Manfred Wegner Contact: [email protected] Contributing editors: Elise Chaplin, Edgar Hendrassen, Andreas Kleinschmidt Design: Formwechsel Designbüro, Düsseldorf Photography: Florian Sander, Jochen Balke Lithography: TiMe GmbH, Mülheim Printing: Köller+Nowak GmbH, Düsseldorf.

© 2010 Siemens AG. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

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Inside

November 2010 Venture 03

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Cover photo: Sweden’s largest biomass plant at Södertälje, west of Stockholm

12 04 News flash Around the world Projects in North America and Egypt, and a strategic initiative for

better refrigeration plants.

06 Focus Burning wood, burning ambition A visit to Sweden’s latest and largest biomass power plant

12 Monitor What you see is what you get Impressions from the 2010 XHQ User Conference in Singapore

18 Spotlight Unexpected friendshipSiemens aggregates its subsea competence at the new Subsea Competence Center in Trondheim, Norway.

22 Insight Against all oddsA glimpse at the not-so-easy project of bringing electric power to Mymensingh in Bangladesh

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Vista

A R O u N D T H E W A l l S — Singapore night light.

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Around the world

Siemens pumping crude oil for TransCanadaʼs Keystone expansionThe first phase of TransCanadaʼs Keystone Gulf Coast Expansion Project began delivering crude oil to the U.S. Midwest in June 2010. When completed, the pipeline will transport crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast and it will be powered by integrated pumping systems from Siemens Energy. Siemensʼ scope of supply covers pumps and electrical equipment for 38 pumping stations, including 104 pumps and motors as well as variable-frequency drives, E-houses with medium- and low-voltage switchgear and unit-control systems for each station. In addition, Siemens will be responsible for system integration of the components and will also supply four high-voltage substations. Says Mr. Jones, chief engineer for the project: “We needed a supplier with the capability to get all this equipment to us on time and on budget. And I must say that Siemens did a very good job.”

This expansion is the first pipeline to directly connect a growing and reliable supply of Canadian crude oil to the largest refining market in North America. At 2,673 km, it is also the longest in the world!

Worldʼs first hybrid combined-cycle plant to be commissioned with Siemens steam turbineKuraymat in Egypt is the first plant in the world to be commissioned using both gas-combi and solar power in a Hybrid Combined-Cycle (HCC) scheme. Operation is scheduled to begin in October 2010, following a 30-month construction period, 2 months of integration with the solar field and one month of reliability tests. The plant will operate at night in conventional natural-gas combined-cycle mode,

and the solar power contribution will be added during the day. Of the total capacity of 150 megawatt electrical (MWe), 110 MWe will be generated by the combined-cycle plant and 40 MWe by the solar plant. Siemens is supplying the 80 MWe SST-900 steam turbine to the combined cycle.

The site is located in Kuraymat, 95 km south of El Cairo and 2.5 km east of the river Nile, in a flat area, practically uninhabited, in the middle of the desert, with a sun exposure that reaches 2400 kilowatt-hours per square meter and year, in the middle of a strategic area for electric power generation and distribution, with gas pipelines, grid infrastructure (550 kilovolt (kV), 220 kV and 66 kV) and very close to the river Nile.

Siemens and GEA Technofrigo join forcesSiemens AG and GEA Technofrigo SpA, Italy, have entered into a cooperation agreement for the study and realization of refrigeration plants used in oil and gas processing, and the chemical and petro-chemical sectors.

Having operated individually in the oil and gas industry for many years, the two companies are now combining their expertise to offer large-capacity refrigeration plants and the centrifugal compressors that work in them. Under the cooperation agreement, Technofrigo will integrate Siemens compressors into their turnkey offer for highly optimized refrigeration cycles.

The cooperation gives customers worldwide the advantage of a single-point partner for a complete refrigeration system, with the additional benefits of a more efficient and economic solution resulting from the joint experience of the two companies.

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Focus

plants, will equal the annual CO2 emissions of approximately 140,000 cars. Being a committed environmentalist himself (as well as a lover of fast cars), King Carl XVI Gustaf said, “The time has never been more appropriate for this type of investment. The fire lit here will be a beacon for Sweden, for Europe, for the world.”

And indeed, Sweden has become an impressive model for the successful diversification of energy production. In 2008 more than half the energy for heating and hot water used bio-energy as its source. But the burning ambition of Swedes to go green is even greater: by 2020 fossil fuels are to be phased out of energy pro-duction altogether.

A voracious plant requires a varied diet!Building up green credentials for the Scandi- navian country required using available natural resources while also instituting policies to incentivize their efficient use. But, to a certain extent, the country was also simply lucky: its lavish water resources, combined with its geographical profile, make hydro power a major natural source of energy, covering almost half the country’s electricity needs. The rest is

provided by nuclear power plants, a small amount of fossil power generation, and a grow-ing proportion of renewables like wind, bio-mass and even solar power. Around four percent of electricity is produced at combined heat and power plants (CHP) which feed the heat pro-duced into a district heating network. The share of such plants in the overall energy mix is growing, as they are a particularly efficient way of providing both electricity and heat for a country where temperatures are relatively chilly much of the year. like the Igelsta plant, more and more facilities use a mix of biofuels and waste in varied proportions reflecting availability and cost.

At Igelsta this mix consists of around 25 percent waste paper, wood and plastic collected from offices, shops and industries, which cannot be recycled together with 75 percent biofuels, in particular forest refuse, wood chips, tree bark, and in the future possibly energy crops such as willow. Much of the waste will be shipped in from Holland: other fuels come from all over Scandinavia and the Baltic states. An indepen-dent fuel-search company works to locate suit-able resources for a syndicate of plants in the

Sometimes the “right thing to do” is obvious, yet difficult to actually achieve. Increasing the use of renewables for energy production is one such thing. It helps to reduce CO2 emissions and preserve precious reserves of fossil fuels for future generations — a noble, if not necessary objective. But markets alone are some-times inadequate to bring about such changes. For example, firing the coal and gas that is readily available, at current market prices, con-tinues to be an attractive economic option in many cases. For this reason, the Swedish gov-ernment stepped in to speed up the transition towards green energy by means of ‘tough love’, using both carrots and sticks. A mix of econom-ic incentives and penalties made new fossil- fuel plants unprofitable. As a result, utilities stopped building them, investing heavily in-stead in plants that use renewables or waste.

In March 2010, Sweden’s largest biomass plant, Igelsta, was inaugurated at Södertälje, west of Stockholm. Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf offi-ciated at the ceremony and professed himself very proud of the new plant. During the first year of operation alone its savings in CO2 emis-sions, compared to conventional fossil-fueled

Burning wood, burning ambition Sweden is the European country with the highest proportion of renewables in its energy mix. This success is the result of market-based economic incentives, the availability of renewable energy sources in the country itself, and the ecological mindset of the Swedish people. The use of innovative technologies also plays an important role: the energy yield from renewables like wood and peat is maximized by modern turbine technology.


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08 Venture October 2010

area: fallen timber, for example, was culled from France after a major hurricane wrecked forest land. Biomass heating is not a system of choice for the French, so their waste was prof-itably converted to Swedish fuel.

While the technology of the power block is test-ed and straightforward — a Siemens SST-800 steam turbine is at its core — the one big chal-lenge for operation of a biofuel plant is logis-tics. “Our plant is constantly hungry,” jokes Mats Strömberg, project manager for the construc-tion of Söderenergi’s plant. In order to secure constant deliveries of “food” — biofuels and waste — the plant is built beside a waterway, where a terminal has been erected. This is also the source of cooling water for the plant.

Fuels also arrive via train and road, three di-verse channels to ease the logistics. The plant was put to the test during its first season since the recent wolf winter blocked access routes with ice and snow. The onsite storage for around30,000 cubic meters of fuel would only last for two days in the event of a complete disruption in the supply chain, so more fuel is stored in neighboring municipalities to keep the boiler fed, and the local people warm and happy.

“Despite these challenges, we have a lot of ex-perience in operating these plants in Sweden. Many municipalities have already built bio-mass CHP plants and others are thinking about doing so. I personally have experience from a similar, but smaller, plant in the city of Gävle,” says Strömberg. For that project, he also chose a Siemens turbine. “Siemens simply made the best offer on both occasions. Price, perfor-mance and technology were right. Among these variables, by the way, performance is the most important, because the plant will go on producing for up to 40 years. And savings through efficiency will add up over time.”

A real beauty The counter-pressure SST-800 steam turbine, delivered in 2009, boasts the biggest heating condensers ever installed by the Siemens in-dustrial turbine plant in Görlitz, Germany. And the biggest single casing made in one piece. The turboset has an energy output of 90 MW, while hot live steam with a temperature of 540 degrees Celsius and a pressure of 90 bar flows into the turbine. It is a so-called tandem compound turbine with the advantage of consis-tently splitting heat capacity between the two preheaters even if the turboset runs at part load.

The red casing of the Igelsta turbine is an eye-catcher. In fact, the plant is a real beauty, with an imposing location, on clear view from the motorway and the railway to the capital. The architects hired by Söderenergi worked together with local architects to come up with a lego-like structure. The huge window of the machine hall provides views of the machinery from out-side and offers a breathtaking vista over the waterway and nearby forests. New ships arriv-ing with fuel deliveries can easily be spotted from there!

A comprehensive certificate trading system was started in 2003, strongly favoring the use of renewables for energy production and penalizing the use of fossil fuels. “This certifi-cate scheme is just one pillar of Swedish reg- ulation with regards to green energy,” explains Jan-Erik Haglund, environmental manager at Söderenergi. “A carbon tax and the pan-Euro-pean emissions trading system are the other two.” A carbon tax of 100 uSD per tonne was introduced in 1991 and has been rising since. Currently it adds up to 50 percent of the pro-duction cost of one unit of energy, when using fossil fuels. The Eu-wide emissions trading scheme was applied by Sweden in a rather

Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf (right) officiated at the inauguration ceremony, where the origin of the plant as a furnace in the stone age and dwelling place in the iron age was celebrated in song and dance by a local troupe of performers.

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“Siemens made the best offer. Price, performance and technology were right. And savings through efficiency will add up over time.”Mats Strömberg, project manager, Söderenergi

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er can then sell on his certificate and generate additional revenue. Many different types of re-sources count as renewables under the scheme: wind, solar, wave energy, geothermal energy, biofuels like those used at Igelsta, peat when burnt in CHP plants, and certain types of hydro plants, excluding most of the large-scale capac-ity already installed.

Market power determines resourcesBy acknowledging competition between renew-able energy sources, the system makes use of the invisible hand, the power of the market to come up with the most efficient use of resourc-es. What makes the Swedish certificate system interesting from an economic point of view is that the virtuous capabilities of a free market could only play out once the state stepped in and removed an assumed market dysfunction, the relative underpricing of fossil fuels. The re-sults speak for themselves: Without the scheme Igelsta would most likely have been designed to burn gas rather than wood waste.

But, taking the long term perspective, Sweden appears to be carrying on an age-old tradition,

becoming once again a forerunner in the field of renewables. Technology is much more ad-vanced today and the economics have been optimized, but the country is still keeping itself warm as it did over 5,000 years ago. It was on the very site of the Igelsta plant, during the construction phase, that an old furnace from the Stone Age was discovered, and a later settle-ment from the Iron Age. Husbanding fire for cooking and warmth is a very powerful tradi-tion!

Burning wood can simply be a very sound ele-ment in a comprehensive strategy for a greener energy production. But the fact that Swedes have a strong bond with the nature surround-ing help to render its use sustainable.

T E X T Andreas Kleinschmidt P H O T O S Florian Sander

F u R T H E R R E l A T E D I N F O R M A T I O N

www.siemens.com/energy/venture/

restrictive manner: no emission rights were handed out to producers of heat in the begin-ning. This put additional pressure on utilities to seek out alternative, low-carbon means of producing energy.

The certificate trading scheme, however, is a purely national endeavor and — as the name indicates — it is market-based. Demand for cer-tificates is created by the fact that all electricity suppliers, as well as certain electricity users, are required to purchase certificates in line with their electricity needs. The quantity of cer-tificates is adjusted every year, increasing the demand for certificates and thus affecting prices. This, in turn, increases the incentive to produce more electricity from energy sources approved for production of certificate-entitled electricity.

New certificates only come into existence through production of energy from renewables. One electricity certificate is issued to each pro-ducer who, in an approved plant, produces and meters one megawatt-hour of electricity from renewable energy sources. The “green” produc-

Focus

“The state stepped in and removed an assumed market dysfunction, the relative underpricing of fossil fuels. Without this system, Igelsta would most likely have been designed to burn gas rather than wood waste.”Jan-Erik Haglund, environmental manager, Söderenergi

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Equipped with pen and paper, camera and sweaters against the chill of the air-conditioning, Venture arrived at the Singapore Grand Hyatt for the 2010 XHQ user conference. XHQ is an operations intelligence software still considered a niche product by many, but to the initiated it has formidable benefits and potential.

What you see is what you get

Monitor

According to Partha Ray, host of the conference and local manager of Siemens Oil & Gas Consulting, to date XHQ has been sold to some 40 customers worldwide, mostly compa-nies in the hydrocarbon business. Forty customers may not sound like big game, but they are big global names. Partha continues: “XHQ is currently monitoring operations at about 300+ sites, with some 50,000 people looking at its dashboards every day.” Put into global perspective, that means an estimated 20 percent of worldwide refining capacity is currently monitored with the help of XHQ, and about 25 percent of the uS domestic refining capacity.

Sharing, caring communityThe three-day conference was packed with real-world cases documenting what XHQ is currently doing. The depth and breadth of scope varies tremendously, depending on the organization using XHQ, and their business priorities. A handful of key findings pop up in almost all cases: energy savings, time savings, reduced operating costs, added visi-bility, process optimization, improvement of communication. Often, the findings are substantiated with real operations data discussed with all frankness. “Itʼs like an oil-menʼs club, with everybody sharing information, discussing ideas and learning from each other,” says Partha. “Nobody is hiding data: they all want to share their achievement.” letʼs have a closer look at some select cases. CALTEX AUSTRALIA — “More eyes looking at a problem” Venture picked the brain of Dr. Mark Hodgkinson, Operational Excellence & Risk Manager with Caltex Australia, who use XHQ for business analytics and process safety. So far, Caltex Australia uses XHQ at two refineries. XHQ is used extensive-ly in both. It has become a way of life. The Caltex business

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case was always “more eyes looking at the problem”, on the assumption that an incident would be better managed, or even prevented, if information were shared among more people in a timely manner.

Optimization, then. It is commonplace throughout Caltex refineries to start the day with XHQ and the morning produc-tion meeting is run with the real-time XHQ view projected on the meeting room screen. This encourages observation and dialog which integrate the business better and help achieve targets.

In many refineries including Caltex’, among the most extensive users are console operators, who get lab reports through XHQ. The moment operators get their data, they can make comments (e-logs within XHQ) on any deltas within XHQ. These may then go into the shift log, which may further go into the daily log. Thus XHQ simplifies reporting and eliminates errors by automating most of the data entry. For these operators XHQ has become the main interface. Caltex Australia did not want to restrict data to engineers or managers. On any one day, the lytton refinery has some 200 to 250 hits. “Business blogging” is bigtime, and everyone is deeply involved in the business.

No questions asked, none neededAn analysis from an independent consultant showed major cost cuts and profit improvements for Caltex Australia, directly attributable to the implementation of XHQ. Mark: “You could achieve the same cost cuts and profit improve-ments by spending hours retrieving and analyzing the raw data — but with XHQ you can do it in the tenth of the time! No manager has ever asked for a justification of the invest-ment,” he adds. “So, XHQ probably saved us a lot of money!”

IDEMITSU KOSAN — Looking through the eyes of an expertWith a staff of 8,000, Idemitsu Kosan operates four refineries and two petrochemical plants, achieving a revenue of 38 billion uSD (2008). Idemitsu first implemented XHQ in 2006 at their Hokkaido refinery: now XHQ is implemented at six production sites and the headquarters.

Yoshio Ohashi, General Manager of the Group IT Center, summarizing Idemitsuʼs experience with XHQ: “There are

two major effects of this ‘real-time’ visibility. First, the sys-tematic capture of the expertise of our workforce, many of whom will retire soon. Second, the complete but silent change of the work process and business process.”

letʼs expand a bit on that. Idemitsu looks upon each view (XHQ screen) as the mind-map of an expert. Hence, when a new employee looks at a specific view, he or she is looking through the eyes of that expert. The ‘mental images’ are live in front of their eyes, driven by live data.

Saving time, saving moneyPrior to XHQ, turning data into meaningful information through manual reports could take weeks, and confidence in that data was always in question. With XHQ, the time dedicated to meetings and reporting substantially decreased. Now everyone shares information all the time.Time savings are estimated to be, amazingly, 8,800 hours per year. Yoshio Ohashi: “We estimate that per site, on average, XHQ is responsible for a profit differential of uSD 10.5 Million. Over six manufacturing sites that adds up to uSD 63 million.” Kaizen: constant improvement These time savings have given people more time to concen-trate on their core activities, or to consider process improve-ments. This is in line with an important facet of Japanese corporate culture — Kaizen, or constant improvement. Pro-cesses at Idemitsu started self-optimizing, with no formal business transformation or process re-engineering project needed as a catalyst.

Kazutoshi Shimmura, Executive Officer & General Manager with Idemitsu Kosanʼs Aichi Refinery, explains: “XHQ meant first and foremost a change in the quality of work. People have more time to think, to decide and to act by themselves. Motivation for Kaizen has improved also, because XHQ makes it easy to compare operations data between Idemitsu refineries. Before XHQ there was simply nothing to com-pare”.

XHQ enables employees to see clearly which refinery is the top-performing one. Kazutoshi Shimmura continues: “And that may encourage people to think about their own refinery and how to improve operations. There is no pressure from


Monitor

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Nightime Singapore impressions after heavy daytime conferencing

Monitor

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the top down. Essentially XHQ enables a strong bottom-up activity. And this is a very important point for Idemitsu.” And indeed, the usage of XHQ is very high: virtually every refinery employee from all levels and functions uses XHQ for their day to day work.

Mr. Daiju Murakami, Chief associate of Idemitsu’s Process-System-Centre and the main architect of the solution ex-plained how the Idemitsu Headquarters and the central functions use the consolidated business overview to make the corporation much leaner (e.g. optimize inventory) and more agile (e.g. switch product mix based on market price, inventory status and process limits).

Respect for human beingsEver since its foundation through Sazou Idemitsu in 1911, the company has worked hard under the fundamental principle of social contribution through business, always maintaining respect for human beings in carrying out business operations. “In a sense, XHQ is a perfect fit to our company’s philosophy, to our work values. It is a means of enforcing our corporate culture, as it promotes people to become autonomous”, says Kazutoshi Shimmura. He then goes on to say: “Accountability is greatly improved with XHQ. Without a system correlating, aggregating and pre-senting data, it is hard to explain our operating status to society, to our shareholders.” This is perhaps the ultimate accolade of the XHQ system.

SAUDI ARAMCO — Enterprise-monitoring solution of a different scale Saudi Aramco is a company of superlatives in many respects. Delivering about 10 percent of the global oil consumption, it is the world’s biggest national oil company. Its portfolio encompasses a quarter of the world’s oil reserves and a tenth of its gas reserves, distributed over a total of 88 fields, in-cluding Khurais, with 2 million BPD, the world’s largest pro-duction facility. Add to that 61 gas/oil separation plants, five domestic refineries, seven upstream and downstream gas plants, 20 bulk plants, 13 air fueling plants and a complex network 24,000 kilometers of pipelines. From upstream through midstream to downstream, Saudi Aramco’s opera-tions are monitored using XHQ.

Before investing in XHQ, Saudi Aramco conducted three pi-lot projects as proof of concept. In parallel, the company visited Chevron to gain first-hand experience of XHQ in oper-ation. Then, from 2004 to 2006, XHQ was deployed at 32 facilities throughout Saudi Aramco’s operations, the project being completed six months ahead of schedule. Since then XHQ has been implemented at some 70 further facilities, in-cluding shipping terminals in Saudi Arabia and in uS Gulf, gas plants, bulk plants as well as the “Intelligent Field” con-cept for oil and gas fields.

Says Saleh Nabzah, Group leader with Saudi Aramco: “XHQ has become an essential application at Saudi Aramco, partic-

Monitor

“XHQ helps our employees to think, decide and act

by themselves. It’s a perfect fit to our com-

pany’s philosophy.”

“Incidents can be better managed, or even prevent-ed, if information is shared among more people.”

Kazutoshi Shimmura, General Manager Aichi Refinery, Idemitsu Kosan

Dr. Mark Hodgkinson, Operational Excellence & Risk Manager, Caltex Australia

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ularly for the management. They get all the key performance indicators directly and can easily make informed decisions and analysis.”

Benefiting from typical XHQ effects such as reduced energy consumption and maintenance downtime, the company is now expanding their Enterprise Monitoring Solution, as the XHQ implementation is called at Saudi Aramco, still further. They recently implemented the ground breaking concept of Generic i-Fields, reducing field implementation time from months to a few hours, and Executive management dash-boards with roll-up information coming for seven different gas plants.

The partnership of Saudi Aramco and Siemens continuously evolves with XHQ becoming an integral part of Saudi Aram-co’s plant operations. Says Ahsan Yousufzai, Manager Oil & Gas Consulting Services: “The ease of maintenance and management of the XHQ tool allow Saudi Aramco to inde-pendently support and expand the existing implementation and also carry out new implementations with their own resources.” Saudi Aramco is truly a pioneer in adopting XHQ in all business verticals of the hydrocarbon industry. The road ahead XHQ differentiates itself from its peers by its proven perfor-mance in heterogeneous IT environment. It is also evolving very fast to extend its capability and reach, including the in-

tegration of sub-surface data, which is being used extensive-ly in Saudi Aramco’s Generic i-Field project.

Recently, XHQ teamed up with OpenSpirit to support the Microsoft® Oil & Gas Reference Architecture, enabling XHQ users to access data from all geoscience applications and data stores compatible with OpenSpirit and thereby inte-grate the entire intelligent oil field in one presentation lay-er. “By using the OpenSpirit interoperability layer to bring in the complex view of the subsurface from multiple appli-cations, customers will see a more robust picture than ever before,” said Jesse DeMesa, Director of XHQ Operations Intel-ligence at Siemens.

Partha Ray’s final word on the 2010 XHQ user Conference: “All this is very rewarding: the commitment of the attendees, the quality of the presentations, the open discussion of best practices. XHQ may play a minor role in the vast Siemens portfolio, but think of it as the cherry on the cake. The cake is undeniably enhanced by the cherry, is it not?”

Monitor

T E X T Edgar Hendrassen P H O T O S Jochen Balke


www.siemens.com/energy/venture

“XHQ makes our plantssafer. It alerts people

before a potential hazard develops.”

“XHQ opens up areas of lost-profit opportunity, as informa-tion is now openly available to all through the XHQ platform.”

Saleh Nabzah, Group Leader, Saudi Aramco

P N Selva Guru, Principal Control Engineer, Singapore Refining Company

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It is hard to imagine two places with less in common than Norway and Brazil. One is cold, the other hot. In one, guests are calmly wel-comed in front of a fireplace, in the other kiss-es fly through the air like the Samba rhythms that spice up daily life. However, take a closer look and similarities emerge. And they go be-yond the enthusiasm for barbecues shared by both.

Both countries could qualify as “green” when it comes to their electricity production, since they draw heavily on hydro power. And both are endowed with vast offshore oil reserves — which long ago made Norway a net oil exporter, and will make Brazil a net exporter in the near future.

However, the gift of offshore oil poses a com-mon challenge to both countries: how to make most of these reserves in an economically and ecologically sound way. using conventional methods, only about a quarter of any given off-shore oil deposit can be extracted. Once a de-posit is tapped, its own pressure pushes the oil up the pipes. When roughly 20 percent of the oil is extracted, the pressure falls dramatically

and extraction becomes less and less effective. Often as much as three quarters of the valuable resource remain in the deposit, which is then sealed with cement and abandoned.

200 percent increase in extraction ratesThis type of conventional extraction is similar to collecting soda by shaking a can, then open-ing it and gathering only what spills out, leav-ing behind everything that remains in the can. Clearly this is ineffective and wasteful; a much better technique would be to insert a straw and suck out the contents. Indeed, this is what most soda drinkers do. And oil companies are now starting to use similar techniques with offshore oil reserves.

By retrofitting existing wells with new equip-ment, up to three quarters of the oil in a given deposit could be extracted. This represents a 200 percent increase in extraction rates. The methods to achieve this are similar to those used in onshore extraction: injecting water into the well to increase pressure and installing pumps to help to get more of the oil. Putting this type of equipment to work far out at sea is, however, a significant challenge — particularly

when it comes to deep sea extraction. Powering this equipment is demanding, too.

In order to consume the minimum amount of energy, compressors, pumps and electrical equipment (to power these devices) must be located as close to the actual well as possible. The reason is simple: pumping oil up from the reservoir and then over an additional distance of up to three kilometers from seabed to sea level requires a huge amount of energy. It is much more economical to do it in two steps, pumping it first to the seabed level and then further up. Thus, placing more pumps and other equipment on the seabed is going to be-come standard in the years to come.

“We cannot afford to leave offshore oil untapped.”Jan-Erik lystad, head of the Siemens Power Elec-tronic Center in Trondheim, Norway, says, “We cannot afford to leave most of the offshore oil untapped. Therefore subsea extraction will be more and more important in the future. And not only in deep sea.” The environmental benefit is that, instead of tapping new reservoirs, existing ones can be exploited longer. At present, roughly

Unexpected friendshipThe days of oil are not yet over. However, the days of ”easy oil” appear to be numbered. Extracting more from existing wells, in particular offshore, is therefore becoming increasingly important — and more economically viable. To make this happen, more extraction equipment needs to be installed subsea. Siemens’ grid solutions are helping to make this possible, as Venture learned when visiting the Trondheim/Norway-based Siemens Power Electronic Center, a part of Siemens oil and gas business focussing on subsea applications.

Spotlight


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a dozen subsea processing units exist world-wide. By 2017 their number is expected to reach almost 50. As more and more offshore fields mature, they will need to be retrofitted as well.

Even in relatively shallow water, subsea extrac-tion can be the solution of choice: For example, newly discovered pockets of oil can be too far from an existing oil rig — “floaters” can be the answer here. These floaters are a kind of satellite to the existing rig. However, their carrying capacity for pumps and compressors is limited, so some of this heavy equipment must be installed on the seabed. In other cases de-posits are relatively close to the shore, allowing the entire installation to go subsea without a rig or any kind of floater at all. A pipeline on the seabed transports the oil to shore and a long electric cable transmits the necessary operating power from the shore — bridging distances of up to 200 kilometers.

More difficult the deeper one goesHowever, deep sea exploration will be one of the most important applications for subsea processing units, and, unfortunately, one of the most complicated ones, technologically. Conditions become more difficult at greater depths. Building the compressors, separators, booster pumps, water injection pumps and multiphase pumps, as well as the multiple valves that can operate in this environment, is an engineering masterpiece. Powering all this equipment electrically is equally remarkable. And this is precisely what Siemens is working on: bringing switchgear units, variable speed drives, control systems and cables deep under the sea. And not just a few meters, but up to 3000 meters below the surface.

Spotlight


1 Typical subsea production facilities powered and controlled by Siemens’ subsea power grid.

2 Aerial view of Siemens’ Subsea Competence Center (bottom left), Trondheim, Norway.

As global leader for transmission and distribution of electricity, Siemens is the first company in the world to offer a subsea power grid solution. This solution encom-passes transformers, switchgears and variable speed drives, to control electrically driven pumps and turbocompressors.

Subsea power grids combine transmission and control & communication elements on a single frame and can be integrated with surface components directly on the sea-bed. They are a key solution to enable subsea production, the power for which is pro-vided by an onshore or topside combined-cycle power plant. Due to the immense depths involved, maintenance has to be done using remotely operating vehicles.

To gain highest compression reliability, Siemens has reduced the complexity of the compression solution (STC-ECO) to a minimum. Also in August, the STC-ECO seal-less compressor unit for dirty-gas and subsea applications successfully completed its fac-tory test program. Completion of the factory acceptance tests is a major milestone in the system qualification program and for marinization of the equipment, which will be an important cornerstone for subsea processing at a water depth of 3,000 meters in the future.

Subsea power grid

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One somewhat clumsy option is to put stan-dard electrical equipment (similar to that used onshore) into huge steel tanks which are then hoisted down to the seabed. “Such tanks would have to endure pressures of up to 300 bar in the deep sea environment, while maintaining one bar inside, in order to keep the electrical equipment working inside. Their walls would have to be up to 20 centimeters thick, making them extremely heavy,” explains Ove Bø, head of research and development at the Siemens Power Electronic Center.

Bø’s teams in Trondheim and at other branches of Siemens Offshore Solutions, in the uS and in Brazil, are jointly working on a more sophis-ticated way of powering subsea oil-processing units. “Siemens switchgears and speed drives will work in oil-filled containers, rather than air-filled ones. This is already standard for transformers and can be done with other equip-ment as well,” says Bø.

The advantage: oil-filled tanks maintain the same pressure inside and outside, without damaging the electrical equipment they con-tain. This allows for relatively thin steel walls, even thousands of meters below sea level, re-ducing both weight and size to about one sixth. This in turn makes both installation and maintenance less costly. The lighter the con-tainers, the cheaper it is to hoist them up and down. Also, heat transfer is better in the case of oil-filled containers, making cooling less of a problem.

By 2013 a holistic Siemens subsea grid solution is expected to be ready for the market. “The complexities of a deep sea grid are great. It is a

tangible benefit for a client to have it delivered by one supplier who can master the complexity and guarantees it works,” says lystad. Siemens has been a leader in the provision of subsea automation, communication and control power solutions for the past 15 years. For example, Siemens has supplied Norwegian oil company Statoil with control systems that operate at depths of 350 meters for its Snorre project in the North Sea. In 1998, Siemens began supplying Brazil’s Petrobras with transformers designed to operate in depths of 1,000 meters for the subsea Carapeba oil field near Rio de Janeiro.

Ever more extreme conditionsBut taking into account dwindling reserves of existing fields, new exploration is venturing out into areas with ever more extreme conditions. For example, Statoil has been developing new oil and gas fields in the deep Arctic waters off Northern Norway, where sub-zero tempera-tures, violent storms, and icebergs pose con-stant hazards. under these conditions, reliabil-ity of the technological solution is vital. In the warmer waters off the Brazilian coast, near Rio, the challenges are different, but no less de-manding. The newly discovered oil deposits there lie below 2,000 meters of water and then 5,000 meters of salt, sand and rocks. An ad-vanced subsea grid solution will be needed to reach this treasure.

Giving that the challenge is of worldwide scope, Siemens is working in international teams to develop solutions. And it is at this point that the common interests of Brazilians and Norwe-gians turn out to be helpful. Claudia Martins da Silva is living proof. She finds herself rather

comfortable in Trondheim, where she is doing postdoctoral research. A chemical engineer, Claudia had worked for the Brazilian company Chemtech. When Siemens took over Chemtech in 2009, this opened up the possibility for her to go abroad on a three-year research assign-ment. Labyrinth of tubes“I had done my doctoral thesis in Brazil on flow dynamics of multiphase mixtures — the mix of sand, water, oil and gas that is usually extract-ed from wells. Norway is the most important center of the offshore industry worldwide, so I find excellent conditions for my work here,” says Martins da Silva, standing between the labyrinth of tubes that criss-cross the laboratory she uses at the Norwegian Technology and Science university (NTNu).

Her work is highly relevant to the subsea grid as well. In greater depths, low temperatures tend to affect the multiflow mix and its flow dy-namics. Siemens supports the cooperation with NTNu with up to 50 million Norwegian Crowns. The results will help to make better use of the treasures under the sea. And an unexpected, but happy, by-product of the investment is the growing friendship between two unlikely com-panions, Brazil and Norway. In fact, Siemens is now opening two new subsea competence centers in Houston, Texas, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in addition to its existing center in Trondheim, Norway.


Spotlight

“latest research in flow dy-namics helps us understand

and improve the flow of multiphase mixtures in sub-

sea production structures.”Claudia Martins da Silva, Chemical engineer, Chemtech Brazil

T E X T Andreas Kleinschmidt P H O T O S Florian Sander


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1 The SST-800 steam turbine arriving by barge on the nearby river

2+3 The power plant completed

4 The plant’s waste-heat boiler

Insight


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Insight


Against all odds — electric power for Mymensingh in BangladeshRural Bangladesh is not the most hospitable environment in terms of geography or infrastructure in which to elevate a hi-tech combined-cycle power plant. Monsoons, political unrest and fragile economy all had their part to play in the ‘power game’ where the outcome was very uncertain for a very long time.

The People’s Republic of Bangladesh, the “Country of Bengal” has had a short and chequered history. Bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma (Myanmar) to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south, present-day Bangladesh was established by the partition from India in 1947. The region then became East Pakistan, part of the newly formed nation of Pakistan, finally becoming independent after the Bangladesh liberation War in 1971. After independence, the new state endured famines, natural disasters and widespread poverty, as well as political turmoil and military coups. Since the restoration of democracy in 1991, there has been relative calm and some economic progress. Bangladesh is the seventh most populous country in the world and the fourth poorest. Geographically, the country crosses the Ganges-Brahmapu-tra Delta and is subject to annual monsoon floods and cyclones, but, de-spite its geographical hindrances, has made significant progress in human development and reduction in population growth and continues to rise to meet its societal challenges. It is indeed one of the N-11 (Next Eleven) countries identified by Goldman Sachs investment bank as having the po-tential to become one of the worldʼs largest economies in the 21st century.

Electric power, of course, is one of the most important infrastructure fa-cilities for the development of a countryʼs economy. In Bangladesh, this is especially so in rural areas to support agriculture and small industries. A stable power supply is becoming increasingly important for trade, com-merce and industry, nationally and for export. This need led to the forma-tion of the Rural Power Company, finally the proud owner of the My-mensingh combined-cycle power plant, one of the first BOO (Build — Own — Operate) plants in the country.

Breaking ground in 2002, the plant was built in two phases, each built round 2 x 35-megawatt (MW) gas turbine generators. In the third phase,

the 140MW gas-fired plant was to be converted into a combined-cycle plant yielding 210MW. Siemens was chosen to be contractor, supervising and coordinating plant construction and civil works, incorporating a 70MW SST-800 Siemens steam turbine into a plant consisting of 70 per-cent non-Siemens equipment, in part locally sourced.

Commercial operation for the additional extension (plus 70 MW) was originally planned for 2006, but the customer had financial difficulties and the plant went into suspension. September 2007, however, Siemens received the PAC (Preliminary Acceptance Certificate) from the customer — but still had 2,000 mandatory spare parts to deliver and 750 points on the punch list. An international team of specialists was called in to com-plete the project, taking full account of the meteorological conditions in Bangladesh, allowing transportation of heavy equipment on barges only during the monsoon season.

Finally, however, in July of this year, the project team, under Dierk unter-spann and Andreas Hofmann, project managers, were able to hand over the plant to the eagerly awaiting customer. Dierk unterspann: “It is very satisfying to be able finally to complete this project, within our time constraints and to the satisfaction of our customer and our management, especially since turnkey plant construction is not our core business. I think we have demonstrated both our flexibility and our dedication under difficult circumstances.”

T E X T Elise Chaplin P H O T O S Dierk Unterspann

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