Gas Compressor Operations Performance Monitoring
Authors: McCormick Dan 
Published: December 2007

The economic benefits for efficient compressor operations have never been greater than they are today. High commodity prices for natural gas increases revenues for the gas producer, but the higher price for natural gas also makes the cost of equipment downtime more significant. With the increasing cost of deploying a technician to the site due to labor cost and vehicle operating expenses minimizing the technician's trips to the site becomes an objective of the compressor operator. Most compressor rental companies have dropped "first response" as an offering for their customers because of this escalating cost, which easily exceeds $100 per hour. First response means that when the compressor goes down the lessee has to go to location first, determine the down fault and attempt to restart the compressor. Only if the fault is mechanical in nature or the operator can not get the compressor started will the rental company mechanic be called out.

The mandate today is to maintain as close to 100% equipment utilization as possible, while keeping personnel and direct operating expense inline. Here, 100% utilization is defined as continuous runtime at peak equipment performance.

An additional challenge for field operators is the limited resources of expertise and experience in the population of compressor technicians. With the escalating increase in oil field operations and the expanding need for qualified personnel the availability of an experienced technician to operate or maintain a compressor is as low as its been since the dismal years of the early 90s.

The inclusion of technology in compressor operations is providing the opportunity of meeting the challenges facing operators. The development and enhancement of remote equipment monitoring, when properly implemented, has been a tremendous boom to the efficient operations of field compressors.

Then …… previous remote monitoring systems had many drawbacks. Systems had to be configured for each application and this meant hardware and firmware development was required for each new application. The cost of communication, if not radio, had a high usage charge and was not consistently reliable. The field data had limited distribution, often observable only to the field personnel within the local field office where the radio tower was located and the server was running the SCADA software. The data coming from the field compressors were often limited to unit run status.

Now …… hardware costs have come down to the point that the savings and revenues offered from increased effectiveness of monitoring provide for a real return on investment. Communication costs, including cellular and satellite, have been reduced greatly over the last few years making the cost issue less important than communications reliability. Availability and utilization of the Internet for data distribution provides the information to a broader audience. Third party Service, such as Service Star, M2M Data Corp. or eLynx, provides turn key capability for equipment monitoring. These venders can furnish: the necessary field hardware, installation of the hardware, the data communications and provide the data distribution to multiple parties via the Internet.

Why? …… With the high price of natural gas, the increasing cost of operations and diminishing experience of field personnel now is the time to act and gain the recognized benefits of using a remote monitoring solution. Data made available in a timely and reliable manner and effectively utilized can lead to enhanced management decisions, reduced operating costs and increased profits. Installation now provides for an accelerated payback and a real quantifiable return on the investment of a compressor monitoring system.

Remote performance monitoring is about monitoring valuable assets. Gathering data from the compressor and transmitting this information via some form of telemetry to a data center for distribution and presentation to individuals for the purpose of having a proactive operating approach can result in the curtailment of unnecessary site trips, reducing premature component failure and avoiding excessive compressor downtime

Remote performance monitoring is an enhancement of current operations and services, not a replacement. An effective remote monitoring program is a tool that can be implemented by the operations staff, providing for "Management by Exception. By implementing a management by exception mode to their operating practices the existing operation staff can be more effective by: identify equipment problems earlier, reducing travel to sites for basic unit inspection, and expanding the number of assets an operator can responsibly maintain. In addition to individual unit performance evaluation, an effective system can provide management reports for history/trends of performance, unit run-time, operator response, and unit and fleet HP utilization. Remote performance monitoring is about gathering data from the compressor and transmitting this information via some form of telemetry to a data center for distribution and presentation to those who will benefit from accessing and reviewing the data. Most of the information an operator can see on the control panel can be available on any company computer.