Centrally Monitoring Global Oil Refining Operations

Omicron has a solid track record of helping oil refineries get the most out of OSIsoft PI. The history begins over 20 years ago, when Omicron has tasked by a New Jersey refinery to develop a method by which engineers and operations personnel could view PI data from nearly any location around the refinery. That project was so successful that Omicron became a contractor to OSIsoft’s PI Development organization.

Another refiner engaged Omicron to develop an easy-to-use web-based platform by which Corporate and more than a dozen refineries spread around the world could make better informed decisions to improve their performance.  PI and custom apps developed by Omicron enabled the refineries to share knowledge and best practices globally.

Omicron has a long history of working with oil refineries, starting before the genesis of PI ProcessBook. Much of the work has been international in scope.

The multi-year project provided strong benefits through increased data accuracy, faster awareness of operating situations and increased collaboration through common information tools. For instance, analytical tools became available to better correlate data with events and prevent bad data from propagating. Drill-through audit trails enabled the users to trust the data, thus eliminating the need for users to maintain their own little data stores. Very importantly, users throughout the entire organization could look at the same data and events through views that they could modify to suit their individual needs.

In this new environment, users could identify why a tank had only a portion of the expected volume – and what action was needed to meet the day’s shipping requirements. Operators and maintenance engineers could also be immediately aware that a compressor was alarming and initiate steps to ameliorate the situation. Dependence on – and time spent creating - spreadsheets was also greatly reduced as performance parameters could be calculated within the PI suite and compared to multiple targets, i.e. planned, scheduled and performance contracts. The platform also enabled engineers to examine energy usage, monitor performance against regulatory requirements and identify opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve energy efficiency.

Omicron constructed this application within the company’s enterprise data center (EDC). Data collected by each refinery’s PI server is replicated to the EDC where common views of data were constructed utilizing the signals originating from the various PLCs, SCADAs, LIMS and business systems portals servers used by the refineries. Much of the application was developed in SharePoint and with the suite of PI Webparts. Omicron installed and configured both Sharepoint and OSIsoft PI webparts at the EDC and set up the refinery-to-EDC PI communications, which necessitated visits to several of the refineries. Plant personnel are able to view their refinery’s data both through their local ProcessBook webpages and through the EDC webpages, thus giving them the comfort of knowing that they and Corporate are seeing the same data.

Omicron's customers depend on us to reduce complexity, slash maintenance, improve reliability and enhance local and corporate-wide operations and decision-making. Our experienced PI and SharePoint team has dealt with many situations similar to this over more than 20 years.