SPE 63005

Start-up Automation of a Petroleum Offshore Platform

Mrio Csar de Campos, Eduardo Satuf, Marcello de Mesquita/Petrobrs S.A.

Copyright 2000, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.

This paper was prepared for presentation at the 2000 SPE Annual Technical Conference and
Exhibition held in Dallas, Texas, 14 October 2000.
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Abstract
It is difficult to control and manage the start-up of a petroleum
offshore platform. In order to solve this problem an intelligent
system can play an important role, since available qualified
operator and design knowledge can be easily implemented to
assist the operator during start-up. This paper describes a
system applied to the start-up of a petroleum offshore
platform. The intelligent system has many heuristic rules to
implement the automation of procedures, like the opening of
many on-off valves while simultaneously monitoring process
variables. This system can shorten the start-up time by 30%.
This intelligent system is operating since June 1999 in the
Petrobras P-19 platform, the Brazilian Oil Company, in
Campos Basin, Brazil. This paper follows reference [1] that
presented the operating interface of this intelligent system.

reduction in the possibility of damage to personnel,

equipment, and environment during start-up.
Plant Overview
The platform, Petrobras-19, is a semi-submersible offshore
production unit. It is operating in about 770 meters water
depth and 105 km off the northern shore of Rio de Janeiro
State. The oil processing systems consist of three major
components: crude oil separation equipment, water injection
facility, and gas-lift compression system. A schematic
overview of the oil processing systems of the platform, P-19,
is shown in Figure 1.

Pipeline
Water Heating System

GasLift

Gas Compression System

180o C

Manifolds
A B
Test

Separators A/B
Oil Separator
B
Oil Separator
A

90o C

Gas-Lift

18o C
Oil
Hot water

Dessalter B
Surge Tank
Dessalter A
Produced
Water

Produced
Water
Pipeline

Water Discharge System

Exportation Pumps

Introduction
The start-up of an offshore production unit is a complex
operation, with risks for personnel, equipment and
environment. On the other hand, as a production platform has
many interlock loops, the frequency of emergency shutdowns,
and consequently start-ups, is higher than those of
conventional industrial units, like refineries or petrochemical
plants.
Thus, an automation system, which minimizes time for
recovery of the platform production, can give noticeable
improvements in economical performance, unit safety and
procedure standardization.
This paper presents the application of an expert system to
the start-up automation of the Petrobras-19 (P-19) platform in
Campos Basin, Brazil. As mentioned, this automatic system
can result in smoother and more economic plant operation,
fewer operating errors, fewer product rejects and also

Test
Separator
wells

Figure 1 - Oil processing plant overview.

After crude oil is separated into oil, gas and water, the oil
flows to pipelines. Gas will be used in the power plant for fuel
and gas-lift operation, with excess being exported. Water will
be treated prior to discharge overboard.
The gas lift facility includes a treatment plant,
compressors, knockout drums, and gas coolers to recycle the
gas in the process plant. The water injection facility
components include filtration, deaeration, chemical injection
and high-pressure water injection pumps.

MRIO CSAR DE CAMPOS, EDUARDO SATUF, MARCELLO DE MESQUITA

Expert System Development

As the ultimate purpose of this expert system is to support
human activity, the end users were involved in the project
from the beginning. As pointed out in reference [4], this
participation motivates the end user to contribute to the system
implementation.
A multidisciplinary team was formed to develop this
project, which was organized in four main phases:
Knowledge extraction and problem representation;

if the surge tank level is too high the operator is asked to

follow a different start-up procedure. The advantage of this
Partida

N
Retornar

Confirma?
Abortar
S
N

I - Sistema de gs
j est em operao?

Sistema em
operao

Prototype and validation;

Implementation and test.

Preliminary design. As the start-up system was built using

an object-oriented software environment, the first step in this
project was the design of the objects needed by the
application. These objects (wells, pipelines, pumps,
compressors, etc.) were used to model the plant and will be
used for others applications, like fault detection and diagnosis
systems [8], and gas-lift optimizations. Figure 3 shows the
pump object (bomba), with its general methods for starting
(bomba::ligar) and stopping (bomba::desligar) a specific
pump.
To implement the operators knowledge, a flowchart
diagram was devised, where each block executes a specific
procedure. There are two main block classes: action block and
decision block. The action block executes a start-up action, for
example, open the on-off valves on the crude oil separation
systems. Within the decision block, the start-up flow changes
as a function of some variable value or condition, for example,

Retornar

Initial design;

Knowledge extraction and problem representation. In this

stage, many meetings were held with operators and engineers
of the platform (summing up 500 Man-hour of work) in order
to obtain the knowledge about the start-up procedures. At the
first meeting, a general procedure for the start-up was
sketched, without handling equipment failures and exceptions.
Then, from the second meeting on, this sketch was
successively refined and detailed, including failure and
exception handling.
There was neither a previous automatic system for start-up,
nor a written procedure. Those operators and engineers knew
how to start-up the plant by the supervisory software and
were in the process of creating a procedure, which would be
documented and reviewed. The operator and engineers
knowledge was represented in a flowchart diagram, which
showed the start-up steps, the parallel actions, the possible
operator decisions, options or choices that could change the
start-up flow, etc.
This format of knowledge representation was considered
good for this work, because it made a clear, natural manner to
represent the way the operator thinks about start-up procedure.
This representation helps the understanding of the systems,
and it also improves the efficiency of the implementation.
Figure 2 shows a flowchart example.

SPE 63005

Start-up
by-pass
geral

Apresentao de
tabela de Status
de SDVs

Inicializao da
temporizao

N
T > 20 min?

Verificaes
gerais durante o
reset das SDVs

Reset automtico
das SDVs

S
Solicitao de
atualizao do
"Start-up bypass
geral"

Todas as
SDVs
abertas?

SDVs no
abriram
totalmente

Start-up
by-pass
geral

N
Continuar?

Reinicializao da
temporizao

S
N

Alguma
SDV crtica
no abriu?

Retornar

S
Normalizao de
SP de
controladores

Partida no pode
continuar

Verificao de
condies para
encerramento

Figure 2 - A flowchart of a start-up procedure.

Figure 3 - Pump (Bomba) defintion.

SPE 63005

START-UP AUTOMATION OF A PETROLEUM OFFSHORE PLATFORM

implementation using flowcharts is that we can follow the

start-up execution as specified in the problem representation
phase.
A structure to represent the plant from the application
viewpoint was developed. Each portion of the plant is
represented as a system. The start-up of a system is done by its
flowchart, which can also do the start-up of another similar
system.
Prototype and validation. A prototype of the start-up system
was developed so that the end users could test the solution,
criticize the interface, and validate the design [2]. The scope of
the prototype was to deal with the start-up procedures of the
test separator. This prototype system was very helpful to
improve the design.

This way, it is possible to run several flows at the same

time and abort one or all of them.
The start-up procedures are transparent to the operators
and follow the flowchart diagram, which was considered a
safe and optimized start-up procedure during the problem
representation phase. The system shows different dialog boxes
to the operators as a function of real-time data, which enable
the user to control and supervise the plant start-up. An
example of a flowchart implementation (a flow) is shown in
Figure 5.

Implementation and test. This expert system runs on a

computer interfaced to a PLC. We could organize the
implementation phase in two main tasks:
Operating interface;
Start-up procedures.
The operating interface has two principal components: a
scroll-area where the system displays messages and data, and a
menu area where the users can choose the start-up options,
change the system configuration, or show the short term
historical trending. The operating interface was described in
reference [1]. Figure 4 shows the operating interface.
Figure 5 A flow: example of a flowchart.
This start-up automation system also monitores the
processing units, and provides reports during the start-up of
the platform.

Figure 4 - Operating interface.

After the experience with the Prototype, we came to three
basic concepts:
flow: implementation of a flowchart, coding an
operational procedure to start-up a system or similar
systems;
system: a set of equipment and instruments; and
sequence: the execution of a specific flow for a
specific system.

Start-up Procedures
This expert system will automatically perform many tasks, but
the operators can continuously control, supervise and change
the steps of the start-up procedure. The operators are
considered as an integral part of this automation system, which
has the aim of helping them during the start-up time. So the
system will act in the process only after the operator
acknowledges.
The start-up system takes care of the main processing areas
of the platform: the oil separation system, the oil exportation
pumps, the gas-lift, and gas exportation systems, and the water
injection facility. For all these systems, the start-up strategy
tries to take into account all operational, safety and
environmental aspects.
A detailed description of all start-up procedures is beyond
the scope of this article. Nevertheless, we will briefly discuss
some aspects of the oil system. A generic start-up procedure
for the oil system of a platform petroleum unit consists of the
following sequence:
Auxiliary systems checking;

MRIO CSAR DE CAMPOS, EDUARDO SATUF, MARCELLO DE MESQUITA

Opening the on-off valves of the separation systems;

Opening the subsea wellhead valves;
Start of the oil exportation pumps;
Opening the choke valves of the wells and start of the
oil production.

The auxiliary system verifications perform a checklist in

all systems and equipment required to the start-up. These
verifications monitor some key parameters and advise the
operators when necessary.
The second relevant task performed by the start-up system
is the automation of the reset of many on-off valves. In this
specific platform, P-19 in Campos basin, the operators have to
open and supervise more than 40 on-off valves to be able to
progress in the start-up procedure of oil and gas processing
units. The main difficulty is that many of those valves are
interlocked by other sensors, so the operator has to remember
to retry opening these valves in a next phase of the procedure.
The monitoring of these valves by the system makes the
overall operation safer and avoids faults and trips.
This intelligent start-up system helps the operator perform
these repetitive tasks, by automating reset, monitoring valve
position, and automatic resetting when necessary. With this
system, the operators can focus on safety, environmental and
quality constraints, and the start-up phase can be less timeconsuming.
The next main step in the start-up procedure is opening the
subsea wellhead equipment. During this phase the start-up
system automatically opens all the wells, and checks to assure
that they are all open. If we attain to this point in the start-up
procedure, all the choke valves are able to open and begin the
oil and gas production. The commonly used strategy in
industry is to open the choke valves of each well continuously
until the desired position. The main problem, when automating
this approach, is the monitoring of many proportional integral
derivative (PID) controllers in the processing unit; for
instance, the level controllers of the separation trains (A and
B) and the surge tank. To solve this problem and to improve
the operation sequence, the start-up system uses during this
phase a fuzzy controller to optimize the opening of the choke
valves. As it is known, the fuzzy controller is able to control
nonlinear multivariable systems in the presence of real-time
constraints [5][3][7]. To get more information on the
multivariable fuzzy controller, see reference [1].
Expert System Results
The expert system is in operation since June/1999 on P-19
platform. The operation personnel, who are working with the
system ever since, points out the following advantages for P19:
Standardization of start-up procedures, which
minimizes missteps in operation.
An average gain of 30 % in the start-up time, due to
the automatic opening operation of 40 on-off valves in
parallel. Before the implementation of the system, the

SPE 63005

operator needed to page through the supervisory

system screens to access these 40 valves.
A friendly interface that allows the operator to stop,
change, or reconfigure the application, and solve
problems at the plant along the start-up sequence.
Several messages, showing the start-up progress, are
shown, and the application helps a novice operator to
do a safe start-up.
Any production well can be configured individually
for operation by the expert system. For example,
choke speed and maximum choke opening are set for
each well. This way, the start-up of production wells
complies with the characteristics and constraints of
each reservoir, and release operation personnel from
this task.
The system does not follow a strict automation
procedure. Instead, it considers many process
variables to decide when wells should be aligned and
opening speed should be reduced. This approach
prevents unexpected interlocks like, for instance, when
high level in the plant vessels occur due to a trip of an
export pump. In Figure 6, the system opens two
production wells at the desired speed. When a
disturbance with the level control of the surge vessel
happens, it can be seen that the opening action is
momentarily interrupted.

Figure 6 Expert System Performance.

Conclusion
An expert system for start-up of a petroleum offshore platform
was developed and produced good results for a safe and
efficient start-up procedure.
The system encapsulates
knowledge of the process to help operators and to guide their
responses during the start-up situations. With the growing
process complexity and pressure for safety, health, quality and
environmental issues, the life of the plant operator is becoming

SPE 63005

START-UP AUTOMATION OF A PETROLEUM OFFSHORE PLATFORM

very demanding [6]. So there is a growing danger of task

overload, with all that implies.
That is why we think this kind of expert system for the
start-up can play an important role in the future improvement
of the operators perfomance and in helping to respect the
safety, environmental and quality constrains.
The combination of improved information to the operators
with the automation of some tasks resulted in shorter start-up
time. The system provides other benefits, like the reduction of
spurious shutdown during the start-up procedures, and it can
be used for trainning new operators. Preliminary economic
analysis indicates that the strategy will pay back about twice
its cost over the year. The cost of the first implementation was
not low, but, for new versions to other platoforms, it should be
much lower.
Acknowledgements
We thank our fellows who worked on this project. We would
like to thank Marcos de Xerez Sobral for helping us with the
project design and with the software, and to Reinaldo Mota,
Luiz Smith and the P-19 staff who worked with us along the
project. Martha Gamboa and Guillermo Abadia helped us with
design and with the software environment.
References
1. Campos, M., Satuf, E. and Saito, K., Intelligent System for Startup of a Petroleum Offshore Platform, ISA Tech 1999,
Instrument Society of America, Phyladelphia, 1999.
2. Goldberg, A. and Rubin, K. S. (1995), Succeeding with Objects,
Addison-Wesley
3. Harris, C.J., Moore, C.G., and Brown, M., (1993), Intelligent
control - Aspects of fuzzy logic and neural nets, World Scientific
Publishing.
4. Kramer, M., (1995), What happened to AI ?, Acta Chimica
Slovenica, 42, pp. 101-113.
5. Kosko, B., (1992), Neural Networks and Fuzzy Systems,
Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall.
6. Lien, K. and Perris, T., (1996), Future directions for cape
research perceptions of industrial needs and opportunities,
Comp.Chem.Engng., V. 20, suppl., pp.s1551-s1557.
7. Mendel, J.M., (1995), Fuzzy logic systems for engineering: A
tutorial, Proceedings of the IEEE, 83 (3), 345-377.
8. Pochmann, M., Xerez, M. de, Ebecken, N., Kaszkurewicz, E.,
Teixeira, E., Bhaya, A., Duro, R., (1994), A Process Fault
Detection and Diagnostic Module for Oil Platforms, 5th
Brazilian Petroleum Congress and CONEXPO ARPEL 94, IBP
Brazilian Petroleum Institute (Portuguese.)