Enagas taps Invensys for Barcelona LNG upgrade

London - Enagas is employing Invensys Process Systems (IPS) to upgrade  control and automation systems at its LNG terminal and regasification plant,  near Barcelona, Spain. The terminal currently has six LNG storage tanks, two with 150,000 m3 of capacity, two with 80,000 m3 and two with 40.000 m3.

The upgrade involves a move from an existing Metso DCS Max1+ to IPS' Foxboro I/A Series technology and InFusion enterprise control system. The vendor is also supplying Fieldbus Foundation digital technology, GPS and sequence-of-events technology, four operator stations, two servers, an engineering station, a Historian server, a Hart station and one remote operation substation.

Enagas began factory acceptance testing of the new systems in July, prior to full start up this December. According to IPS, its systems now cover the entire regasification and storage sites at Barcelona Terminal, and it is in negotiations with Enagas to provide an operator training simulation system for a new grassroots terminal being planned for the north of Spain.

"One of our biggest challenges was to carry out the project without a shutdown so that Enagas could continue to meet contractual commitments to their electricity-generating customers," said Victor Martinez, IPS client sales executive. The presence of existing IPS ' Triconex emergency shutdown and fire and gas system installations on the site was a factor in it winning the contract, he said.

The Barcelona Terminal is one of three such facilities run by Enagas, which currently has more than 7,600km of high-pressure gas pipelines in Spain, plus two other regasification plants and one underground natural gas storage facility.