Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces that it has been awarded a contract to supply FOUNDATION Fieldbus (FF) instrumentation for the Groningen gas field development project.
The contract was awarded to the Stork GLT consortium, of which Yokogawa is one of the consortium partners.
This new contract complements the original 60 million euro order placed in 2002 for the south gas field’s automation system, and will replace the conventional DCS with a state-of-the-art digital control system based on FF technology that was proposed by Yokogawa. Being worth 38 million euro, this latest contract will realize one of the largest FF- based digital control systems worldwide.

The facilities are located in the province of Groningen. STORK GLT is a consortium, which consists of Stork Industry Services (construction and maintenance management), Jacobs Engineering Group (design), Siemens Demag Delaval Turbomachinery (compressors), Siemens (Compressor Motors) and Yokogawa (Main Instrument Vendor). 

Yokogawa was one of the founders of the Stork-GLT consortium in 1996 when the first phase of this long-term gas project began, and has been in charge of the design, supply, installation, and maintenance of a variety of measurement and control instruments as well as a CENTUM CS 3000 R3 integrated production control system, an instrumentation protection system, and an Exaquantum plant information management system. Ultimately, 29 clusters and 296 gas wells will be controlled and operated remotely from a central control room.

A key for Yokogawa in winning the previous contract for this major project was the high reliability of its products and technology as well as the professional performance that it demonstrated in the first phase of this and other projects. Furthermore, Yokogawa’s previous successes in FF-based control systems for major instrumentation projects also encouraged NAM to introduce the latest FF-based digital control system in the second phase of this project, involving the Spitbergen 1 & 2 clusters, as well as in the following project phases.

The FF technology reduces both the amount of wiring required for equipment installation and the number of field devices that must be installed. In addition, it reduces the amount of engineering work such as start up, construction and field work, and enables both predictive maintenance and remote troubleshooting. FF technology itself is seen by NAM as an enabler to operational and maintenance benefits. It is anticipated that NAM will be able to reduce its operational and maintenance costs by more than 1 million euro over the next five years.

Yokogawa aims to increase sales in the brisk international market for energy-related projects, capitalizing on the reliable control technology that it has developed over the years and on its reliable monitoring technology that utilizes cutting-edge communication technologies and is ideal for use in large-scale, wide-area projects.