MAC-Based Solutions Help Lower Costs

Q: In a new and dynamic Mexican environment, where can Wood Group’s strongest expertise be found?

A: Mexico is seeing a number of companies coming to the Gulf of Mexico supporting offshore and deepwater projects. Here, Wood Group’s strongest expertise within automation is as Main Automation Contractor (MAC) throughout the whole life cycle of the asset. Included in MAC services are telecommunications, advanced applications, modeling and simulation projects, as well as training and learning for operations. These services generally start with engineering studies and continue through design, procurement, manufacturing and testing of equipment, followed by installation and commissioning. MAC-based automation solutions have been acknowledged across multiple industries to provide overall lower costs while ensuring the startup and normal operations are completed with minimal to no upsets due to the holistic view of the automation system.

Q: What cost advantages can Wood Group offer to the industry with automation projects?

A: Automation has been instrumental in helping to achieve up to 10 percent production increases in shale wells. Another very important advantage of our well integrity tools is that they also can be used to increase the asset lifetime via monitoring and analysis in order to detect pressure losses and perform preventive actions that contribute to significantly increasing the well lifetime. In this cycle of low oil prices, shale wells in the US have particularly benefited from these tools by helping to extend their typical one-year lifetime to up to ten years. This technology has a strong market in mature wells in the US, and we are proud to introduce it to Mexico, thereby helping our clients to increase the expected return on investment (ROI) from their oil exploration and drilling projects.

Q: How can Wood Group support the winners of past and future oil tenders to operate more safely and efficiently?

A: Wood Group is recognized as a vendor-independent, full-service company, allowing us to be customer-focused instead of product-oriented. This means that we focus on the customers’ needs and how to best attend them in a bespoke way. Our solutions solve the customers’ problems and comply with the highest quality and safety standards to protect workers and the environment, help to improve project ROI and extend the assets’ useful lives.

Q: Automation has brought savings in both occupational safety and costs. How is Wood Group achieving excellence in cybersecurity?

A: Cybersecurity is an issue that is at the forefront of the oil and gas industry, given the increasingly advanced technologies being developed. Wood Group promotes using established architecture frameworks that are tailormade to fit our customers’ needs. Vendor independence allows Wood Group and the customer to find the best solution for each project. Ensuring the integrity and security of the asset is critical. Providing functional safety and cybersecurity consulting, we support compliance with ISA84 and security of process control systems.

Q: How can Wood Group help to modernize the aged refinery infrastructure in Mexico?

A: Modernizing infrastructure tends to be difficult, mainly because of the lack of information regarding its current status, making it almost impossible to have a common understanding of the problem between all the project’s partners. If each partner on a modernization project understands a different problem, then each one will also set a different roadmap that does not align with the client’s goals. Wood Group uses cutting-edge technology such as laser diagnostics and 3D scanning that enables us to retrieve a solid and live picture of the infrastructure’s status that can be used as common ground among all the project members. Once common ground has been established, real and effective milestones that will meet the client’s goals can be proposed.