In March 2004, the new TRACE MODE based control system of natural gas wells was successfully completed in the Province of Sychuan (China). This wells belong to PetroChina corporation - a state oil and gas company producing about two thirds of Chinese oil and gas and the second largest corporation in the country.
By the results of 2003, PetroChina was 83rd in the list of 500 largest world corporations. More than 3000 natural gas wells are being operated in the Province of Sychuan. Sychuan Oil and Gas Administration at PetroChina is the biggest natural gas producer in the corporation.
The control system of gas production deposits has been developed for remote data acquisition, alarming and monitoring of the natural gas wells located in a hard-to-access area via GSM-network. TRACE MODE is the world leader in GSM-based remote control technologies that's why the company chose exactly TRACE MODE.
The following TRACE MODE modules are used in the Sychuan deposit process control system: RTM, GSM-Activator, Web-Activator and Global Documentation Server.
The wells and the information centre are distant from each other, the communication between RTM and GSM-Activator is carried out via a wireless GSM-modem. The connection with remote controllers is performed according to the Modbus RTU protocol. The information centre obtains real parameters from wells by the CSD method (data flow).
The real time alarm data is operationally transmitted to cellular phones of five Administration's departments. Engineers of these five departments can also request the information from wells. Totally, up to 70 people can simultaneously be connected to the information system. On operator PCs located at the information centre, the same data can be visualised via Web-Activator in the form of graphical mimic panels.
During the next two years PetroChina is planning to develop the TRACE MODE based remote control system of the Sychuan gas deposit, including about 3000 wells located in the Province of Sychuan. |