Petronas Finds Upstream Success with Asset Management Modeling

In the upcoming February 2019 print edition, I reveal Petronas, a global oil and gas giant, and its data-driven maintenance transformation — that started in 2015 with the addition of the condition-monitoring initiative, called Protean. That’s the company’s internal name for this monitoring project that centers around OSIsoft’s PI Asset Framework (AF) and its machine modeling technology for upstream oil and gas assets in Malaysia. The AF historian allows for Petronas to link to other OSIsoft applications, such as PI VIsion, PI DataLink, or PI ProcessBook, and then be used to build displays, run calculations, deliver important information. 

>> See the video below on the entire digital transformation at Petronas upstream operations

The initial challenge for Petronas’ maintenance and engineering team, which oversees 130 pieces of aging, hard-working gas turbine-driven equipment, was the lack of accessible data on machine performance and reliability. In essence, there were too many “unconnected” databases and didn’t allow for quick, maintenance reports and resolutions.

From the upcoming Feb. 2019 column:

“We were having daily issues with disparate databases and generating a report could take more than seven days,” says Timur Tashkenbaev, production technologist at Petronas during the 2018 PI World conference. “On certain days, the oil well would quit and it would take three days from detection to react to it.” According to Petronas, one production day for one well can be in the range of 30,000 barrels.

Video | For more details on the three phases of this data-driven maintenance transformation, click here to view the presentation by Petronas at OSIsoft’s 2018 PI conference.

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