Russian oil firm Gazprom Neft joins forces with Japan's Yokogawa to establish a refining control centre
Image: Officials from Gazprom Neft and Yokogawa during signing of MoU. Photo: courtesy of Gazprom Neft PJS.
Russian oil producer Gazprom Neft and Japanese electrical engineering and software firm Yokogawa Electric have signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) to establish refining control centre.
Gazprom said that the collaboration will create what it claims the industry’s first production control centre for managing its own refineries.
The future centre will be designed to facilitate the transition from managing individual facilities and complexes to the predictive management of entire processing chains.
As part of this effort, Gazprom Neft will join forces with Yokogawa to implement solutions for developing the new centre and transform production management processes.
Initial pilot project planned at Gazprom’s Omsk Refinery in 2021
Gazprom plans to undertake initial pilot project at the Omsk Refinery in 2021 by taking over operational production management, including control over daily plan fulfilment, product quality, energy consumption, equipment status assessments, and the monitoring of industrial and environmental safety.
The firm said in a statement: “Thanks to the implementation of “digital models” — precise mathematical models of all of the refinery’s technological facilities and complexes — the production control centre will be able to ensure predictive and the proactive elimination of any deviations from optimum operation and integrated planning.”
The firm also plans to implement the project at the Moscow Refinery by 2021.
Gazprom Neft logistics, processing and sales deputy CEO Anatoly Cherner said: “Digital technologies open up fundamentally new opportunities for managing continuous, complex and large-scale production.
“We are, already, using machine-learning and neural-networking technologies to ensure continuous quality control over oil products, and are using Big Data analytics systems to develop refinery production plans.
“The new centre will be an important technological and managerial link in an integrated management platform covering the entire value chain, from refining to sales.
“Thanks to these and other digital transformation projects, we are able to address our strategic goal of improving the business’s operational efficiency, as well as improving reliability and safety in production activities.”