Fluor Corporation (NYSE: FLR) announced that Fluor Offshore Solutions, a unit of Fluor, has been awarded an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) support contract for Phase 3 of the Malampaya Deep Water Gas-to-Power Project. The project is being undertaken on behalf of the Philippine Government by the Service Contract 38 consortium composed of Shell Philippines Exploration B.V. (Operator), Chevron Malampaya LLC and Philippine National Oil Company—Exploration Corporation. This landmark project is among the most significant in the Philippines. Approximately 40 percent of the power for the main island of Luzon is generated by power plants using Malampaya gas. This new contract follows Fluor’s successful completion of the front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract for Phase 3. Fluor booked the undisclosed contract value in the third quarter.

“This new EPC contract for the Malampaya Deep Water Gas-to-Power Project solidifies our strength in the growing global offshore gas market,” said Peter Oosterveer, Fluor’s president for Energy & Chemicals. “Fluor’s long-term presence in the Philippines is a testament to the outstanding work by our professionals, now 2,220 strong, in our Manila and Cebu offices, who are providing full-service project execution.”

Fluor Offshore Solutions is providing detailed engineering, procurement and selected construction support services as well as supporting the Shell team in managing the local fabricator.

At two brand new facilities, gigantic oil tanks with a combined capacity of four million cubic metres are being constructed, together with associated plant including heat exchangers and pumping stations. The sites are operated by pipework networks incorporating four hundred and sixty-nine explosionproof Rotork valve actuators with Pakscan digital control systems.

These apparently random statistics are all connected with a giant oil storage project in Central China created as part of a key national energy programme to provide crude oil reserves for national and commercial consumption.

Rotork China worked closely with several valvemakers to supply the IQ intelligent electric actuators for valve control at both sites. The majority are IQ multi-turn units, many equipped with IB series bevel gearboxes manufactured by Rotork Gears. The balance comprises IQT quarter-turn and IQML linear modulating actuators. Virtually all the actuators are controlled and monitored by six Rotork Pakscan P3 two-wire digital networks, which are specifically designed for the safe, reliable and efficient operation of valve actuators in the spacious environments associated with tank farm installations.

Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces that its subsidiary, Yokogawa Electric Korea Co., Ltd., has won an order from POSCO ICT*1 to supply control systems for a power plant at the Krakatau Posco*2 steelworks, which is being constructed in Cilegon, in Indonesia’s Banten province.

This power plant will have two 100 MW power generation units that will use the steelworks’ by-product gases as their main fuel source, and is scheduled to start operation in April 2014. This order is for CENTUM® VP integrated production control systems for the boilers, auxiliary boiler facilities, and auxiliary turbine facilities in each of the power generation units. The first unit’s system is scheduled to be delivered in January 2013.

Yokogawa has delivered numerous power plant control systems to customers in industries such as oil, chemicals, iron and steel, and pulp and paper. Over 50 Yokogawa control systems are operational in power plants that utilize by-product gases such as the blast furnace gas and coke gas generated at steelworks. POSCO currently uses Yokogawa control systems in nine 100 MW power generation units at its Gwangyang Steelworks. In addition, Yokogawa has installed 300 control systems at oil refineries and other facilities throughout Indonesia, and has established an extensive service network in this country. This is why Yokogawa was able to win this order.

Kepware Technologies, the leader in advanced automation for communications, announced today that it is teaming with ZPI, Inc. to drive industrial automation and improve the quality of business data delivered to the company's manufacturing customers. By leveraging Kepware as their OPC server provider, ZPI is meeting increased demand for reliable, operation-related metrics and achieving lean six sigma and continuous improvement initiatives. To learn the full details, download the ZPI case study at http://www.kepware.com/casestudy/kepware-and-zpi-quest-data-perfection/.

Based in Ontario, Canada, ZPI provides enterprise manufacturing diagnostics software to help customers accelerate production while improving top-line performance and reducing waste. "With the economy struggling, manufacturers must focus on total quality management and six sigma initiatives," said Paul Mancini, Vice President of Marketing and Innovation at ZPI. "The truth is, it's just not possible without the right diagnostic tools in place. This places a premium on highly accurate, real-time, business-critical data."

ZPI frequently found that their manufacturing customers were leveraging a competitive industrial automation and control system that dropped connections and produced inaccurate data reads. These issues stemmed from poor network design and occurred when new data overtaxed the overall network configuration. As the flawed data reports continued to impact the manufacturing improvement processes, ZPI turned to Kepware and their award-winning KEPServerEX® offering.

KEPServerEX is specifically engineered to connect a wide variety of industrial automation devices and applications, from plant control systems to enterprise information systems. The flexible and scalable software can efficiently manage, monitor, and control diverse automation devices and software applications. Kepware also provides a highly effective interface, offering plant-level data, bottleneck analysis, and immediate problem identification.

In typical installations, ZPI creates a Kepware channel for each individual production asset, thus providing insulation from communications failures that may occur in other channels. When combined with the auto-demotion functionality, this feature results in near-perfect data.

"Right away, we noticed improvements in the quality and usability of data we were receiving. Because Kepware provides a rich suite of drivers, you can connect to almost any device at any time. This lessens support requirements, lowers total project costs, and ultimately improves reliability of performance metrics," noted Mancini.