Invensys opens offshore operating center

Feb. 26, 2008

Plano, Texas, - Feb. 26, - Invensys Process Systems has inaugurated an offshore operations center at Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche State, Yucatan peninsula, southeast in the Gulf of Mexico. The facility is part of an Invensys initiative to operate a center of excellence for upstream oil and gas in Mexico to help its customer, Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), improve asset utilization and availability in its facilities there.

The new center has all of the resources necessary for Invensys to support PEMEX in the northeast and southeast regions. Support resources include training courses and technical services for maintaining applications, system expansions, logistic management platforms, plant materials and emergency stock. Risk analysis services for system configuration and standardization on alarm and system operation are also included.

The short-term objective of this strategy is to support an ongoing multi-year contract that provides preventive and corrective maintenance for more than 70 safety systems, including emergency shutdown and fire and gas applications. The center will also help support a recent project through which Invensys will automate eight PEMEX offshore platforms in the Ku-Maloob-Zaap oilfield, using an I/A Series(r) process control system and FOUNDATION Fieldbus technology and services.

In the medium term, in cooperation with PEMEX, Invensys will be offering performance services to improve asset utilization and availability. These services include hardening control systems, cyber security, alarm management and enterprise asset management, among others. At the new center, Invensys will also provide a comprehensive set of applications that simplifies dynamic process analysis offline, including rigorous simulation and modeling applications for dynamic offline risk analysis. These applications improve real-time decision-making by providing a simulated environment in which operators can safely visualize the consequences of responses in various risk situations.

In the long term, the center will provide technology and services to address the ongoing challenges of hydrocarbon extraction, including, for example, dealing with issues arising from the fact that hydrocarbons from the region typically contain high concentrations of water, sand and other contaminants. The offshore operations center helps resolve such problems by providing advanced analytical solutions and applications that optimize crude oil production and risk management while helping to maintain safe work conditions and secure operations.