Commercial Liquids Application

Commercial Liquids Applications (CLA) is an integrated suite of real-time business operation, pipeline logistics and accounting modules. CLA allows companies to conduct business in an entirely Web-based environment. In design, CLA resembles many other Web-based interfaces: users interact with the system through hyperlinks, text fields, check boxes and buttons. On a business level, CLA operates on the basis of a two-way communication process between a shipper and a Pipeline Company.

As part an integrated solution, CLA also provides the means for the customer to predict, plan and monitor in real-time all aspects of daily volume management to meet supply and demand market forces. 

When CLA is integrated with flow measurement data from a measurement system, operators can compare volume flow throughout the day to the day’s supply and delivery plans.

Application provides the means to efficiently manage supply, transportation and customer deliveries in one application, preventing a flow deficit or surplus at the end of the day. 

CLA is extremely flexible and allows data to be grouped and viewed at a meter, station, and region or stock level.

With CLA, Producer Oil shall be able to achieve following goals:

·         Manage the supply chain with one integrated solution

·         Manage Inventory and Balancing of all pipelines as a whole

·         Optimize the operation of pipelines

·         Exercise agreements and contracts on-time and more accurately

·         Support extremely flexible business environment of an open market

·         Share more accurate and complete business information among stake holders

Pipeline_Management_Solution.pdf

Architecture

CLA will be deployed on an integrated and centralized basis at the MCC with client access thru the WEB. It will be installed on the dedicated Web/Report server which is connected to the MCC SCADA network behind a firewall to allow a secure access from both internal and external users.

It will share the clustered SQL Server installed with Real-time/Historical service of SCADA system for better performance and reliability.

Since CLA is a web application, including management and configuration, only internet browser is required at the client side.

CLA is developed upon EIIF (Enterprise Information Integration Framework), an advanced platform that has following features :

• Web 2.0 technology

o   .NET + Ajax + Flash.

o   B/S architecture, C/S desktop style GUI, with pros from both – zero client maintenance cost of B/S and rich user experience of C/S.

o   Asynchronized refresh technology, reduced response time and bandwidth consumption.

o   Dozens controls embedded, i.e. treeview, toolbar, textbox, listbox, menu, flashbox, etc.

• Enhanced security model

o   Unique multi-layer security model can fulfill requirement of any size of organizations.

o   Can be integrated with Windows Domain or 3^rd party solutions for SSO.

o   Support remote users logon with secure username and password.

• Fully integrated with Visual Studio

o   User interfaces and business logics all developed within VS2008/2010.

o   WYSIWYG, no requirement of coding with JavaScript for web applications, just drag and drop, as easy as desktop application development.

• Unique ORM (Object-Relation Mapping) technology

o   Generates objects from database tables automatically and reduces the time and error of coding dramatically.

o   Supports all commercial RDBMS.

• Embedded dynamic chart controls

o   Supports all popular format of charts, i.e., bar, pie, column, line, etc.

o   3-D animation.

o   User definable styles.

• Embedded easy-to-use reporting module

o   User definable reports.

o   Support Excel template.

o   WYSIWYG.

Based on EIIF, CLA is designed specifically for logistics business of oil industry. For TPCOP, following modules of CLA are provided :

• Contract Management (Transportation/Sales)
• Nomination and Allocation
• Inventory and Balancing Management
• Stock Account Monitoring
• Billing and Invoicing

 

Contract Management

CLA accepts and evaluates contract requests for capacity and storage space, over the Internet. Transportation contracts allow shippers to ship a daily amount of oil through a pipeline system for a specified period of time. Using the CLA interface, shippers request contract points along the pipeline system, and then submit their contract requests to the pipeline company for evaluation. Shippers can also view pending and active contracts, and request changes to contracted capacities.

The system gathers all contracts and contract requests and displays them in tabular format for review and adjustment by pipeline company personnel. When contract administrators approve a contract, CLA generates a contract document. Through e-mail, post, or fax, the company can then send this contract to the shipper for signing.

Nominations

CLA accepts and evaluates monthly and daily nominations over the web interface.

Since the demand for oil changes day to day or month to month, the shipper must submit daily nominations to indicate the actual amount of oil they want to transport through the various points. These nominations define the entry and exit locations and the volumes at each location. Nominations may also indicate injections to, or withdrawal from, storage facilities. Shippers can enter nominations for one or more contracts, and modify these nominations up to a specified time of the business day. The system validates all nominations against the capacities of the point. Personnel can modify or reject a shipper’s nomination that exceeds the contracted volume for the point or the physical limits of the pipeline.

Allocations

CLA sets and runs automated allocation methods to distribute volumes among the nominations. CLA uses the following set of allocation formulas to distribute the measured volume of oil among all the nominations made against a point:

• Pro Rata - Proportionally distribute volumes

• Percentage – Distribute based on a configured percentage

• Ranking – Allocation based on ordered rank

• Swing shipper – Allocate balance of volume to designated shipper

The Allocation Summary screen provides information on allocated volumes for all contractible points. Personnel can use this screen to review daily nominations and allocations, and to manually adjust allocated volumes.

Allocation reports can be published to shippers to enable them to perform their billing activities. If prior-period adjustments are made, allocation reports can be republished showing the differences to the shippers.

Inventory and Balancing Management

This module can manage oil physical inventory and balancing of the whole logistics chain. It collects metering data of pipelines from SCADA/LMS or other sources periodically, calculates station balance from metering data and then regional balance from station balance based on configured pipeline segments and their relationship with stations.

Stations are connected to regions as different classes, i.e. receipt point, delivery point, linepack, so that net volume inflow, net volume outflow and loss and unaccounted volume flow (LAUF) are calculated automatically for regions. 

Inventory and balance data are displayed as tabulars and trendings, so users can analyze the data efficiently for any metering problem.

Manual data entry of meter readings is also provided to endure communication lost to the site or non-EFM points.

Billing and Invoicing

The invoicing module allows shippers to view all of the invoices for their contracts. Each invoice lists the applicable charges for a period of time. These charges are for oil transportation, delivery and storage, imbalance penalties, and out-of-period adjustments. Tariff charges are calculated using volumes from allocations and information from the applicable Tariff Sheet. Financial staff, meanwhile, can view and generate invoices for all shipper contracts. They can also manually add additional charges and perform reconciliation on existing invoices due to out-of period adjustments.

When a company approves and issues a contract, CLA enables personnel to assign a tariff sheet to the contract. The tariff sheet consists of a series of charges and tariffs applied to all contracted points. When financial staff creates an invoice for a shipper, CLA uses the assigned tariff sheet to create a list of charges and tariffs for all points contracted by the shipper. Financial staff can create or modify existing tariff sheets and charges through simple data entry screens. CLA will also support the specific billing model of Producer. 

This model can define tariff for each segment of pipeline and bills the shippers based on their usage of segments.

Invoices can be printed or sent to the shipper using email, fax or published on the web. The financial transactions associated with the invoices can be extracted in a generic format that can be used by accounting systems such as SAP, Baan, Peoplesoft etc. This includes; accounts receivable, accounts payable and general ledger transactions.

Stock Account Management

Oil stock account management of CLA can track the virtual inventory for shippers. Each shipper can have more than one account that is configured with initial fill, relevant contracts and delivery points. Shippers and transporters can reconcile the stock accounts each month. Discrepancy of oil stock account balance and line pack change will be allocated to stock account with customized calculation. Oil stock on the account can be transferred to other accounts.