Inventory management was not accurate: The manual comparison of tank gauge to truck delivery ticket often showed a discrepancy. Resulting gains or losses were periodically calculated and booked manually into the inventory management system. Because it was manually entered, the resultant values were occasionally inaccurate.

Quality information was not accurate: Quality was controlled by the loading and offloading rack equipment during the load but not tracked. During loading, a periodic sample was collected. The final sample was then manually tested for basic sediment and water (S&W) content and gravity. This data was not made available, nor was it traceable by any electronic means. The result was that inventory of product and water was not a measured quantity.

Data entry was not accurate: The manual entry of each load and its
attributes were inaccurate, resulting in the company having to pay producers for product they did not receive. The company also had to pay for product shortage claims by the receiving terminal because there was no electronic or verifiable traceability of the custody transfer. Company losses were estimated at more than a million dollars a year.

Customer expectations

• Account for product in and out of the CDP
• Monitor and control product quality
• Account for drivers and trucks contracted for transport
• Monitor safety issues for drivers and trucks
• Integrate to the back office accounting software
• Provide traceability of the inventory management process

Trucks were dispatched to the gathering tank locations to load crude oil for transport to a central distribution point (CDP). The driver would manually note the load details on a paper delivery ticket.

The CDP would receive the product by truck or pipeline for later distribution. The CDP would manually compare the delivery ticket to the change in tank gauge to get an approximation of the quantity offloaded.

Trucks would load from the CDP for transport to an export terminal. The CDP produced a paper ticket for delivery to the receiving terminal.
All loading results, along with tank inventories, were manually entered into the company’s back office system.

TechnipFMC delivered:

• FuelFACS terminal automation system
  • Business and control software
• Loading rack automation using the TechnipFMC microLoad Preset
  • We configured the microloads to monitor quality parameters, control them by stopping or diverting poor quality product, then publish the results to FuelFACS
• Integration to the customer's back office inventory accounting system

For this project, the standard FuelFACS software was delivered. There were two additional pieces of functionality added to the system:

• Integration of the accounting data directly to the back-office system as defined by the company’s IT staff
• Support for the retrieval and storage of S&W information from the microLoad presets

TechnipFMC personnel configured the site physical attributes of tanks and loading equipment and the commercial data, including source, destination, driver, trucking company and vehicle.

Our engineers performed factory training for the customer. The training was designed to help the customer perform day-to-day operations and future configuration changes without TechnipFMC intervention.

We also performed a Factory Acceptance Test at the customer’s headquarters. The customer approved commissioning to commence. A total of five sites were commissioned.

The customer’s project manager was present at each commissioning site as a liaison between the TechnipFMC project team and customer
operations. This ensured safety compliance and helped to verify system functionality.

TechnipFMC project team’s main concern after safety was to keep production running. Operations were minimally impacted during
commissioning.