TOTAL E&P UK, one of the largest exploration and production subsidiaries of the TOTAL Group has installed a 10,000 point + CitectSCADA system to provide monitoring - with full dual redundancy - of the control and safety systems for the giant St Fergus gas terminal in Scotland. The Terminal plays a key role in supplying Britain

TOTAL E&P UK, headquartered in Aberdeen, is the fourth-largest operator in the UK sector of the North Sea, in terms of production and reserves. The St Fergus gas terminal on the north east coast of Scotland is part of the company’s onshore operation. Recently, the terminal was upgraded, and as part of this project the SCADA system that had served the terminal since the 1980’s was replaced with CitectSCADA.

The CitectSCADA system sits above the Terminal’s safety and control systems, monitoring all pipeline telemetry from a dozen feeder platforms, the flow rate, pressure and composition of the gas, and also the control systems of the terminal as the gas is blended.  
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 “We can adjust hydrocarbon levels for gas sales, monitor metering systems and perform data gathering, CitectSCADA puts it all together for us, providing all the required data in one place,” said Rob Sidebottom.
In addition to the benefits of scaleability and centralised data gathering, Citect SCADA has also enabled the St Fergus systems engineers to take the cost out of the operating interfaces to the Terminal’s safety and control systems.
“CitectSCADA is an engineer’s SCADA, which means that we were able to pull it apart and reconfigure it just how we wanted it,” said Rob Sidebottom. “We configured the system to emulate the trending, alarm and reporting functions of the previous SCADA system. This avoided problems with safety and operator retraining, as the new SCADA system provides the same screens as before. As a result, the operators were comfortable with the new system from day one; they saw nothing different to what they had always seen.”

The operating regime of the St Fergus Gas Terminal: 24-hours a day, 365- days a year, means that the 10,000 + point CitectSCADA system provides the security of full redundancy. All telemetry links and clients - currently 10 - switch automatically and seamlessly in the event of failure of the primary server. This safeguard is easy to achieve with CitectSCADA; the system is designed with DCS- style multi-level redundancy, which is easy to configure and can be incorporated at all levels. The significance of this for the user is the ability to tolerate hardware failure anywhere in a system, with no loss of functionality, performance, communication or system reliability.
“The success of this project has tremendous cost-saving implications for the oil and gas sector,” said Paul Hurst, MD of Citect UK. “It means that production and receiving facilities, whose futures were questionable due to the looming obsolescence of their current SCADA and DCS systems, can remain productive for many more years to come.”
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About CitectSCADA
CitectSCADA offers key user features such as graphical process visualization, advanced alarm management, historical and real-time trending, built-in reporting and statistical process control.                                       
                            
It is used extensively in the oil and gas industries worldwide; its flexibility, speed of operation, and ability to handle from the smallest to the largest systems (450,000I/O plus), enabling it to perform remote monitoring and control of pipelines, tank farms, natural gas and liquid hydrocarbon extraction sites, and also offshore platforms.

About Citect
Citect is a leading, global provider of industrial automation, real-time intelligence, building automation, next generation manufacturing execution systems (MES) and on-demand benchmarking applications. Leveraging open technologies, CitectHMI/SCADA, Ampla, and Citect Facilities connect to multiple plant and business systems. Citect products are complemented by Professional Services, Global Customer Support and Educational Services. They are installed in over 80 countries and implemented in numerous industries: mining, metals, food and beverage, manufacturing, facilities, water, gas pipelines, power distribution and pharmaceuticals. Headquartered in Sydney Australia, Citect has representation in Oceania, Southeast Asia, China and Japan, North and South America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.