Co-Pilot: Operational-excellence-as-a-Service

The sustained reduction in global oil prices and globalization of LNG markets means energy efficiency, the largest controllable operating cost, is of vital concern to today’s producers. However, the LNG industry faces particular challenges in making meaningful energy reductions. Perhaps more than any other industry, LNG facility energy consumption is tightly linked to production. These technical challenges are exacerbated by human challenges; a worldwide shortage of skilled engineering and operations staff, and the remote nature of many LNG production sites makes it difficult and costly to build up staff capabilities.

We have been applying a structured margin optimization methodology, taking into account process, energy and reliability interactions, for many years and now digitalization technologies offer new and disruptive ways to overcome these unique LNG challenges.

With this methodology, opportunities are generated with potential savings by LNG facilities running into millions of dollars per year. Digitalization helps these opportunities become realized faster and sustained more robustly. The latest generation of digital twin is now capable of monitoring, managing and optimizing energy use across an entire facility. By hosting the digital twin in the cloud, remote experts are able to assure the continued operation and accuracy of the digital twin, meaning that the site team are always making decisions on a sound basis.

Furthermore, a global pool of experts across all disciplines are available 24/7, and can be proactively alerted in order to provide advice, and build up local capabilities. The cloud also allows collaboration with other 3rd parties, such as the streaming of data to Phillip Townsend Associates (PTAI) for real-time energy benchmarking.

The pressures for energy reduction are significant but the rewards are large and digital technology offers an opportunity to overcome the traditional hurdles. Our Co-Pilot ‘Operational-Excellence-as-a-Service’ leads to a sustainable step change in performance.