Case Study: RAPOR: An Operational Reporting and Management Control System

Client: Centrica Storage Limited

Centrica is a provider of energy and other essential services at home and on the road in the UK, Europe and North America. In November 2002, Centrica acquired the offshore, pipeline and onshore assets of the Rough gas storage facility from Dynegy UK Ltd.

Shell

The Rough asset is the largest gas storage facility in the UK, with the capacity for holding approximately 100 billion cubic feet (bcf) of stored gas and has a deliverability rate of 1.5 bcf per day, approximately 20% of the United Kingdom gas supply at times of peak demand. Centrica uses systems designed by Flare to control and manage the daily operations of this complex facility.

Systems deployed: Flare-RAPOR

Benefits

Deployment of collaborative reporting environment and standard processes for managing on and offshore operations.
Seamless asset integration, improving management control over geographically dispersed assets.
Context-based access to information reducing information overload and, providing technical users and management with the information they need dependant on their role.
Instant creation of key business reports ‘at the press of a button’.

Excecutive Summary

Management identified a number of inefficiencies in their production reporting practises including extensive use of spreadsheets, disparate systems, reliance on facsimiles and a number of data silos. This resulted in delays in the day to day operations decision making process and even longer delays to perform analyses and generate technical, financial and legislative reports. Management also recognised that improved standards and processes in the operations environment would significantly improve efficiency and the quality of decisions.

The Solution

Flare was contracted to deliver an integrated information system that satisfied the needs of both the technical users and the management.

The initial engagement consisted of a business analysis phase, in which all reporting methods and processes were examined and streamlined by Flare.

The resulting application was designed to: improve the quality, integrity and visibility of information; enhance the decision making process; reduce or eliminate manual processes; decrease the cycle time for availability of information; and deliver a collaborative working environment.

Users are guided through the daily workflow needed to manage the complex operations for the onshore gas plant and for the offshore platforms. A unique, role-based environment ensures that users only see the information that is relevant to their job function, presented in an intuitive and relevant manner.

Staff and management can obtain overviews of plant, operations, log books and key performance indicators and are able to drill down into the detail if a problem occurs or further analysis is necessary.

All users can see what is happening right now across the entire asset, as well as having access to historical reports and forecast information.

Many reports are ‘intelligent’ and report critical information or information which is out of tolerance, providing a clearer understanding of current problems, and dramatically improving the decision making process.

Reports can be generated instantly and all historical information is available for analysis. Technical reports such as UK DTI Production Returns and reservoir simulation input data can also be created within the RAPOR environment.