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Estimation of Production Rate Limits
Using Agent-Based Simulation for Oil and Gas
Plants Safety
Yukihisa Fujita 1 ,KimNeeGoh 2 ,YokeYieChen 2 , and Ken Naono 3
1 Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd., Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa, Japan
yukihisa.fujita.hg@hitachi.com
2 Computer and Information Sciences Department,
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia
{gohkimnee,chenyokeyie}@petronas.com.my
3 Hitachi Asia Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Kuala-Lumpur, Malaysia
knaono@has.hitachi.com.my
Abstract. Safe production is one of the most important issues in oil
and gas plants. Oil and gas companies lose enormous amounts of money
and trust once they experience accidents such as explosions and oil spills.
They have to make clear production rate limits to mitigate the human
related risks that cause accidents. In this study, we model plant workers
using an agent-based simulation to estimate the limits. The proposed
model represents that plant workers solve problems with risks, and that
the probability of the occurrence of a problem is proportional to three
main factors, the production rate, the plant size, and the plant equipment
degradation rate. The experimental results show that the proposed model
can estimate the limits for different sizes of the three factors. The results
imply that the limit estimation made by the proposed model is very
crucial for plant operations to mitigate human-related accidents.
Keywords: agent-based simulation, oil and gas plants, production rate
estimation, plant worker, risk mitigation.
1
Introduction
Petroleum is one the most important and useful energy resources in the world.
According to the International Energy Agency, the worldwide energy demand has
continuously increased [1,2]. Oil and gas companies have to meet the demands.
However, resource production has risks that cause accidents such as explosions
and oil spills. Once they experience such accidents, they lose enormous amounts
of money and trust [3,4]. Therefore, safe production of oil and gas is one of the
critical issues for these companies.
There are three production process stages, upstream, midstream, and down-
stream for produce oil and gas from the available resources. The upstream
process contains searching for the resources, drilling exploratory wells, and
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