August 16. 2011 2:00AM - Last modified: March 14. 2012 1:24PM

Rockwell gets $4 million oil sands project order

  

Milwaukee-based Rockwell Automation Inc. received a $4 million order to help Grizzly Oil Sands produce more than 5,000 barrels of oil per day in the first phase of its Algar Lake Project.

Rockwell's Global Solutions team will use its PlantPax process automation system, which supports steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), an enhanced oil recovery technology for producing heavy crude oil and bitumen.

"SAGD production has recently surpassed all other methods of in-situ oil sands recovery. We continue to look for ways to advance our ideas and optimize our efforts to recover bitumen from the one trillion barrels of oil in the Athabasca Oil Sands deposit," said Brian Harrison, vice president engineering, Grizzly Oil Sands. "For our unique Grizzly facility model we needed an advanced, integrated process and motor control system that would monitor multiple SAGD sites from one central location, now and as we expand."

A shadow control room, built on a virtualized computing environment, will be developed at Grizzly's Calgary headquarters to monitor and control the company' scurrent and future oil sites across Northern Alberta, Harrison said.

"This unique, open architecture is an important reason Rockwell Automation won the order," he said.

The project also includes project management and engineering services, low and medium voltage motor control centers, and a PowerFlex 7000 medium voltage variable frequency drive.

"This is a major win for us in the oil sands market, and an important win for our PlantPAx and integrated architecture platform," said Terry Gebert, vice president and general manager, Rockwell Automation Global Solutions. "It includes architecture, software, and power control in one solution, utilizing a major process automation system designed to improve plant-wide optimization and reduce extraction costs. Our experience, oil and gas domain expertise, and global resources will help Grizzly Oil Sands run a profitable and sustainable operation."


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