Yemen Masila Export Project

The Supervisory and Data Acquisition System (SCADA) for Canadian Occidental was developed in association with Gulf Interstate Engineering Company (Houston, Texas) and Colt Engineering (Calgary, Alberta).

The Site

The SCADA systems developed for the Yemen oil field were located in Al Mukalla, Ash Shilgra and Aden.

The System

The system consisted of 78 eP CAC 6500 remote terminal units (RTUs), 3 separate RealFlex based master stations and a remote RemFlex monitoring station. The RTUs each had 48-hour battery backup units with 13 of the RTUs powered from Solarex solar panels.

The master stations at the central production facility (CPF), export terminal facility (ETF), and power plant were based on Action Instrument 486/66 industrial rack mount PCs delivered in custom designed system consoles. The master stations were configured as hot standby/redundant units with additional networked machines using LanFlex.

The CPF and the ETF master stations were interlinked by BJScan, and the remote terminal at the Aden facility by RemFlex. The RTUs are distributed across a 110-km pipeline and well system, collecting and controlling well and pipeline system functions. All of the RTUs were capable of collecting data from Rosemount Micromotion Net Oil Computers.

With the site geography, it was necessary to use a complex radio system with repeaters, polling master radios and master radios based on the MDS 2000 system. The radio system sites were interlinked on a Harris Farninon Microwave system.

GIEC/Colt Engineering integrated, with assistance from eP, a GE Fanuc PLC system with multiple units at the ETF and the CPF controlling the process plants at both locations. Additional interfaces were integrated in the RealFlex master stations to communicate and control a Varec Tank Gauging Sub-System, a Rotork Pakscan Valve Actuator Sub-System, and a Fisher Meter Prover Sub-System.

The master stations also use RealFlex options, Control Sequence Language (CSL), direct data exchange and DOS file system.