Shell is a global group of energy and petrochemical companies. Shell Global Solutions is the global technology consulting services arm of Royal Dutch Shell Group. It provides business and operational consultancy, technical services, licensed technologies and research and development expertise to the energy and processing industries worldwide.
Challenge
Shell faces a multitude of challenges involving production, transportation and surveillance of hydrocarbons and more. Factor in governmental and contractual regulations and things become even more challenging and costly. In order to facilitate the move from the prevailing data-rich but information-poor environment, the technical processes and tools used to interpret data had to be revamped. The change involved moving from a daily volume system to an hourly energy system with strict tolerances on under and over deliveries and gas quality.
One of the implementation sites – NOGAT, Netherlands – recognized the need to change the nomination and allocation procedures in response to developments in the gas market and the downstream balancing regime. The implementation of the new system demanded major inputs from commercial, operations and IM/IT. The delivery necessitated a cross-discipline team of over 100 people drawn from vendors and across many Shell departments.
As a preferred vendor that has been delivering value to Shell for a number of years, Perficient’s track record of high-quality delivery and expert professional resources made us the logical partner for such a challenging undertaking.
Solution Deployed
LAGOSA (Liquid and Gas Online Scenario Analysis system) is a collaborative work process automation solution that is used for online integrated monitoring and forecasting workflows for gas-gathering systems. LAGOSA monitors critical pipeline and onshore parameters such as operating pressure, temperature and liquid content, and forecasts liquid inventories, slug sizes and gas compositions. LAGOSA combines historical data along with rigorous, engineering model-based forecasts into a scheduling and planning workflow.
Through the LAGOSA web interface, planners can schedule the daily and weekly nominations and perform “what if” analyses to determine the optimum production strategies based on the model predictions. The LAGOSA implementations use a Shell Group IT-compliant architecture to automate work processes and are delivered via a global infrastructure available from Shell's three data centers.
LAGOSA is developed using proven Microsoft technologies including the .Net Framework 2.0 - 3.5, C#, Workflow Designer, MS SQL Server, and third-party charting tools.
Business Value Delivered
- Ensures the commercial attractiveness of NOGAT with a significant revenue stream. NOGAT changed from a production-driven to a customer/market-driven organization
- Each month, LAGOSA provides more than 25,000 engineering simulations that produce information targeted at better operations planning decisions
- 24/7 uptime with informed decisions based on proven analytical methods, developed in cooperation with asset engineers
- Improved gas delivery targets and cost savings. NOGAT now delivers gas energy within a 2% hourly tolerance, 99% of the time
- Accuracy of deliveries and forecasts allows LAGOSA users and their customers to avoid penalties