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In the Asia Pacific region, the main driver for oil & gas and petrochemical businesses is being able to adapt quickly to energy prices and market fluctuations. Taking advantage of changing industry dynamics and overcoming complexity is vital to achieve operational excellence and increased profits.
According to a recent report by ExxonMobil, the petrochemical giant, Asia’s share of global energy consumption will rise from 38 percent in 2010 to 45 percent by 2040. In addition, ExxonMobil believes that Asia’s demand for oil will grow by 38 percent by 2025 and by 57 percent by 2040. In gas, Asia’s demand will grow by 91 percent by 2025 and by 159 percent by 2040. In the region, a key motivation is to sustain growth in Asia and accelerate productivity.
Drilling deeper into this view of Asia, an article published in Slate calls out China as the world’s largest energy consumer and a net importer of oil. The country also grapples with serious pollution – exacerbated significantly by the local heavy industries. The price of success has never been clearer. Asian process manufacturers need to quickly reduce emissions via energy management within the plant. Organisations face increasing pressure to reduce costs and meet customer demand in the fastest way possible. In short, adopting best practice and implementing integrated process optimisation software helps companies drive efficiencies and maximise returns.
Optimisation is no longer a choice
The more a company optimises its operations, the more profit it will make. Technological breakthroughs open up possibilities for stakeholders across the business to improve performance, whether producing faster, more agile analytics aimed at modelling and simulating, or improving decision-making.
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In Asia, roles and duties frequently change and this means engineers need to be more flexible. For example, a scheduler may work in a plant for a couple of years and then move on to another role elsewhere. Accessibility to easy-to-use integrated software tools helps new chemical engineers learn the industry and apply themselves quickly to their roles.
Capitalising on market opportunities can create commercial advantage. Therefore, understanding better the dynamics of crude grades, natural gas liquids and petrochemical feedstock is important to be able to take measures that will reduce adverse impact on margins. With the right technology, empowering decision-makers improves capital and operating forecasts and also helps to balance strategies both globally and regionally.
Innovation is about delivering creative solutions to business and operational problems. A good example is in the area of advanced process control (APC) where the technology addresses a manufacturers’ challenge in maintaining process models. Such solutions help engineers control the plant and drive continuous improvement in APC to reduce energy costs and squeeze maximum value out of the operation. Other examples include more sophisticated and integrated planning to data-driven optimisation, which automates workflow to help unlock static business areas. This allows staff to adjust and optimise overall performance, remove the barriers of silo practices and build collaboration to deliver better results.
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Fragmented work processes within different departments are a major challenge - not just to optimise a specific department or plant, but to integrate and optimise the overall network operation and production lifecycle. To illustrate this point, an engineering conceptual model for a plant might be disconnected from the planning view, which in turn is disconnected from the scheduling view right through to the disconnect of an individual unit. Hence, from design through production, technology can be used to understand the activities between planners, traders and schedulers and facilitate greater integration and collaboration with predictive analytics and operator guidance to avoid costly downtime.
The system of success
Many energy companies and process manufacturers have standardised on process optimisation software. Crucially, having a unique system in the form of integrated solutions helps customers optimise across the enterprise to increase capacity, improve margins, reduce costs and become more energy efficient. An integrated software suite (platform) allows users to become proficient faster, bringing the power of optimisation to more people in engineering, operations, planning and scheduling across the enterprise. As a result, companies can achieve operational excellence and be more commercially profitable.
The cycles within the economy and the energy industry have clearly had an effect on process companies in recent years. When times are good, an integrated software system helps companies optimise the value of their operations and various end markets. Yet, when times are difficult, the system is used to drive further efficiencies covering cost reductions to maintain earnings when crude oil prices are low.
Vision for the future
Asia offers enormous potential to capitalise on cheaper feedback for its petrochemicals industries.
Bringing distinct operational areas together into a cohesive, optimised system and doing so across the broader value chain will overcome complexity, drive greater efficiency measures and increase profitability. Advanced integrated software solutions help Asian companies to be more consistent and reduce variability within their operations. Unifying the value chain with seamless technology eases the stress on assets and enables companies to perform better and remain competitive in the marketplace.
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Dr Filipe Soares-Pinto is the SVP Sales (APAC) at AspenTech
