Case Study
FourPhase - New innovation
Secures Oil Supplies
Oil Production and FourPhase
Oil prices heavily affect GDP growth. Therefore, it has become more critical than ever for oil producers to improve their efficiency in terms of long-term crude price stabilization. However, globally, 70% of reservoirs run into production difficulties because of issues with solids.
Traditionally, operators require dedicated employees to walk around a plant to operate equipment manually. When solids cause well blockages and, ultimately, production shutdowns, re-completion is required, which is costly and emission-intensive.
FourPhase provides an innovative data-driven solids separation system with over 60 hard sensors to automate solids removal in real time. Moxa enables reliable communication in these harsh environments with the equipment placed directly downstream from the wellhead, onshore or offshore.
With real-time data-driven analysis, FourPhase and Moxa help transform oil and gas production and secure oil supplies
Client
| Industry: | Oil & Gas |
| Headquarters: | Bergen, Norway |
| Website: | www.fourphase.com |
| Founded in: | 2012 |
Operational Challenges
Traditionally, operators require dedicated employees to walk around the plant, open valves manually, write the data generated by every sensor cautiously on paper, and operate the equipment manually.
Besides, without simultaneous monitoring and operation support, the operators must apply re-completion or coiled tubing (CT) cleanout to resume production when solids have caused well blockages and complete shutdowns.
These approaches are costly and emission-intensive, with high levels of CO2. The ideal is to extract oil out of the ground in the quickest, safest, most affordable, and sustainable way possible.
However, drilling new wells does not always achieve this. Enhanced oil recovery techniques from old wells will inevitably be developed and leveraging them is paramount to reducing the carbon footprint.
FourPhase incorporates real-time data to automate solids removal, as data is the key to achieving the perfect result. Thanks to digitalization, FourPhase can collect a variety of data sets with its compact equipment from an oil-and-gas well. For instance, one of its core solids separation systems, the Dual Flow, comprises over 60 hard sensors and 500 soft sensors to gather real-time data, thus continuously recording the status of solids.
The on-site sensors collect data every 10 to 100 milliseconds, gathering a significant amount of data. The data is transmitted back to the offshore database, ranging from once every minute to once every hour, based on the application’s requirements.
Therefore, unlike traditional solutions that only react when a blockage occurs, FourPhase accumulates rich insights with continuous data gathering to perform predictions for better decisions, optimizes operation efficiency, and fulfills remote and automated monitoring and operations.
To drive data-driven operations, FourPhase developed a “Brain Box.” It acts as a central nervous system to manage communications between equipment and connect all equipment units, such as desanders, surface safety valves, and HMI screens, to transmit data through Ethernet to a cloud-based control room.
FourPhase’s equipment, including the Brain Box, is placed directly downstream from the wellhead, onshore or offshore. The equipment must deal with saltwater, heavy rains, storms, or extreme heat of up to 50°C, for example, in deserts.
These harsh environments require reliable communications solutions to meet the system’s demands.
Solution
The FourPhase’s Brain Box includes a PLC, a EtherCat module, Moxa’s EDS 200/300 Series Ethernet switches with fiber connectors, and AWK Wi-Fi access points. All of the equipment units, such as desanders, surface safety valves, and HMI panels, connect and communicate with each other through Ethernet.
The transmitted data is accessed from an OPC UA server running Modbus, TCP/IP, and HMI protocols. To ensure the critical data gets transmitted, FourPhase also uses Wi-Fi access points to create redundant on-site data transmissions via wire and wireless mechanisms.
“So far, FourPhase has run over 100,000 operational hours. We’ve been going with Moxa since day one. There has been no downtime or any incidents related to Moxa products,” said Jørgen Bruntveit, CTO of FourPhase.
FourPhase usually installs their equipment for the removal of solids in a Zone 2 area. Therefore, because of potential oil and gas leaks in the field, ensuring all electronic devices in the systems are explosion-proof is top priority.
Moxa provides a complete series of connecting products with ATEX Zone 2 certificates. It gives FourPhase the flexibility to choose from a large portfolio of suitable devices with different requirements, including the number of ports, mounting design, and fiber-optic extensions.
“We have used Moxa products in all our connected equipment since we founded FourPhase. I honestly don’t recall we ever had an issue with Moxa’s products, and we haven’t had a single minute or second of downtime with the products, which is compelling.”
FourPhase COO & CTO, Jørgen Bruntveit, an innovator and influencer recognized by Hart Energy’s ’40 under 40’ program
Results
1.
FourPhase has run over 100,000 operational hours. Each system has around three Moxa devices to power up to 2,000,000 hours of operations together with no downtime.
2.
In contrast with the traditional reactive solution, FourPhase, by accumulating data and insights, is forging the advancement of prescriptive maintenance strategies in the management of solids.
3.
With real-time data-driven analysis, FourPhase and Moxa help transform oil and gas production and secure oil supplies.
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