Petrofac has completed the integration of Kuwait Oil Co.’s (KOC) new Crude Oil Control Centre.
The new centre controls the blending of heavy oil from the Ratqa field, in Kuwait’s north, with lighter crudes from the south. Petrofac also provided the blending technology.
The new control centre connects up with local control rooms across southern Kuwait. Work on the project included the laying of 220 km of new fibre optic cable. This work involved major road crossings.
Petrofac said it had also managed to avoid interruptions to exports while installing the equipment. The company carried out work on tank farms, manifolds and export facilities without shutting down processes or operations.
It has helped create one of the “longest single legacy networks” operating in the world, Petrofac said, through the merger of two “huge control system legacy networks”.
Petrofac’s Lower Fars heavy oil development project team oversaw the integration of the new control centre. The work has improved the effectiveness of operations, it said.
The Lower Fars team works on producing heavy oil from the Ratqa field, which KOC owns and operates. The field holds billions of barrels of oil. It was discovered in 1979, but the heavy nature of the crude slowed development.
Petrofac won work on the Lower Fars heavy oil development in 2015, with its share of the contract worth around $3 billion. Equipment injects steam into the field in order to produce the oil.
KOC began producing from Ratqa in 2020. The first phase can produce 60,000 barrels per day.
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