Yokogawa plays key role in Khurais producing facilities Project

by Namrata Merchant, YME

As the Process Control Systems supplier for the Khurais Central Producing Facilities Project, Yokogawa Middle East & Yokogawa Saudi Arabia have delivered top-of-the-line Distributed Control Systems (DCS) and given a boost to Saudi Aramco’s prowess in providing a fully-integrated, world-class crude oil processing and stabilizing facility at Khurais.

Yokogawa also delivered a fully-redundant, state-of-the-art Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system to monitor and control the production, transportation and delivery of oil from wells spread over a wide area, including Khurais, Abu Jiffan, & Mazalij.

In addition to several other challenging initiatives in the regional energy sector, the Company is playing a pioneering role in Saudi Aramco’s Khurais Central Producing Facility. This plant, the biggest in Saudi Arabia, is designed to produce 1,200 MBCD of stabilized Arabian Light (AL) crude blend from the three fields with an approximate water cut of 30%.

In August 2006, Saudi Aramco chose Yokogawa to work with its Lump Sum Turnkey (LSTK) contractors as the Process Control System (PCS) supplier for Khurais Central Processing Facility Project. The project was divided into three sections and awarded to three different major LSTK contractors from Italy and South Korea. The plant is a large scale unit, with 16,000 hardwired DCS inputs/outputs, 11,000 hardwired ESD inputs/outputs and 1,200 VMS points. YME deployed three teams catering to individual LSTK contractors.

Yokogawa equipped their new facility in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, to stage and test the entire system configuration in a fully-integrated manner. Yokogawa’s project teams were comprised of 60 engineers who were seconded at LSTK contractor’s location to assist and provide technical support in designing the system to customer’s requirement. As part of its commitment, Yokogawa recruited several of its Saudi engineers trained and capable of interacting with Saudi Aramco & LSTK engineers during the engineering and testing phase. Additionally, Yokogawa is providing the STARDOM RTUs for the Wasia water wells, which are integrated into the utility DCS.

This scope was awarded in January 2008 and was executed in a span of six months to meet the project requirement and schedule. Yokogawa supplied state-of-the-art consoles from Evans Console in Calgary to meet the modern design of the Central Control Room (CCR) planned by Italian architects from Snamprogetti, Italy. The new CCR will control and monitor the GOSPs, stabilizing facilities, water injection facilities, gas facilities, and SCADA units from individual operator consoles. The site installation and the Site Acceptance Test has already been completed for each facility.

Yokogawa is supporting contractors and Saudi Aramco with loop check activity and will proceed with commissioning activities in the months to come. Through the successful execution of these contracts from its base in Bahrain and the new facility in Saudi Arabia, Yokogawa has once again proven its capability to execute large-scale projects in the Middle East, to the fullest satisfaction of its customers.