STATOIL/ASGARD SELECTS VUENT FOR OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS PROJECT
Vuent, Inc. announced Norwegian state-owned oil and gas giant, Statoil, in conjunction with its Asgard offshore oil and gas project, has implemented Vuent's Envision-i to provide enhanced access to its engineering data warehouse and improve design model distribution.
As one of the world's largest net sellers of crude oil and a substantial supplier of natural gas to Europe, Statoil ranks as the largest retailer of gas and other oil products in Scandinavia. Statoil has been working to expand its oil and gas production to include a major offshore field development with floating and sea-bottom facilities for oil, water and gas treatment in the Norwegian Sea. Known as the Asgard Project, this $4.4 billion project includes the largest sub-sea development in the world.
"Our business need was to find a product that could provide a web-enabled 3D graphical front-end - a web portal - to our Plant Information Management (PIM) data warehouse supporting our Asgard project," said Adrian Park, principle engineer with Statoil. Currently, the Envision-i 3D server is in use at three Statoil locations: Oslo, Stavanger, and Stjordal. The PIM data warehouse applications support engineers and maintenance/operations personnel within Statoil, and external contractors and suppliers during all phases of the plant life-cycle, according to Park.
To facilitate the sharing and exchange of technical information between project participants, Statoil/Asgard designed a central data warehouse to make information available over the Internet. Vuent's Envision-i was the only solution that provided the interoperability standards that permitted Statoil/Asgard to link 3D CAD models with its associated engineering data warehouse information over the Internet and corporate Intranet.
Using Envision-i as the front-end visualization tool to the Asgard data warehouse, contractors and operations personnel can navigate a 3D model, and, by clicking on a specific object in the model, retrieve information related to that object. Information that can be retrieved includes design data with technical/functional hierarchies, links to over 80,000 technical documents, and links to information about installed equipment including manufacturer, model/variant, serial number and manufacturer/supplier data sheets. There are approximately 111,000 design items documented in the Asgard data warehouse, including compressors, pumps, motors, filters, heat exchangers, instruments, cables, pipelines, valves, telephones, and loudspeakers.
Envision-i also permits users to query a specific item stored in the data warehouse and link to a specific graphical location within the 3D CAD model, enabling the user to then review and annotate the visual representation of that piece of equipment.
"Envision-i tightly integrates engineering data with 3D CAD models, allowing our engineers to access the vast volume of information available in our data warehouse in new and more effective ways," said Park. "With its intuitive interface, Envision-i lets our engineers quickly access and interact with the information they need for critical decision-making, increasing the overall efficiency of Asgard's continued development and operation."
In addition to the Asgard project, Envision-i made engineering and design models more accessible over the corporate Intranet throughout Statoil's worldwide facilities. Prior to adopting Vuent's collaborative-commerce solution, the company had only a few centrally located workstations where models could be reviewed. Those systems were not integrated with the corporate information systems. "Now with Envision-i, all project participants and operations personnel, including non-specialist engineers, can access and collaborate on the 3D models from their desktops," said Park.
"Industry-leading companies like Statoil/Asgard are ahead of the curve when it comes to information technology innovation," said Cynthia Holladay, Vuent vice president of marketing. "Vuent is proud to be playing such a vital role as they execute this progressive and challenging project."
For more information about Vuent, visit http://www.vuent.com.