Global optimization: Gas mainline replacement planning
Mark Thornton
National Fuel Gas Distribution Corporation
10 Lafayette Square
Buffalo, NY 14203
Ray Boy
National Fuel Distribution Corporation
10 Lafayette Square
Buffalo, NY 14203
Abstract
An on-going challenge faced by National Fuel Gas Distribution Corporation (NF) is to
identify gas mainline most in need of replacement, given the corporate goal of maintaining a
safe and reliable system within budgetary considerations. The process of assisting
Engineering to evaluate many possible mainline replacement project scenarios throughout
NF’s service territory was dubbed “Global Optimization.” NF’s challenge was to utilize
existing AM/FM/GIS data and develop a low cost analysis tool using off-the-shelf products
requiring minimal customization. NF met this challenge by employing an available program
that would utilize existing graphic and tabular leak data from different sources. This data
was then spatially analyzed to highlight ranked clusters of leak and water interruptions.
These leak clusters were then grouped into “super-clusters” to help identify areas for NF’s
systematic replacement program. To date, NF has plotted various leak points throughout its
New York and Pennsylvania service territories. This tool is fully functional and has been
used to facilitate project planning for calendar year 2000. The project has been deemed
successful by its user community in that what was envisioned was in fact built, that the total
cost of development was minimal, and that the time to bring up the system was reasonable.
National fuel
National Fuel Gas Company (NYSE: NFG), incorporated in 1902, is a diversified energy
company with its headquarters in Buffalo, New York. The Company’s assets are distributed
among six business segments: Exploration and Production, Pipeline and Storage, Utility,
International, Energy Marketing and Timber. National Fuel Gas Distribution Corporation
sells or transports natural gas to over 733,000 customers through a local distribution system
located in western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. National Fuel Gas Supply
Corporation provides interstate natural gas transmission and storage for affiliated and
nonaffiliated companies through an integrated gas pipeline system that extends 3,065 miles
from southwestern Pennsylvania to the New York-Canadian border at the Niagara River. It
also owns and operates 29 underground natural gas storage areas and is co-owner and
operator of four others. NFG Supply Corporation and NFG Distribution Corporation are
involved in the AM/FM/GIS project.
AM/FM/GIS project background
In 1992, National Fuel Gas Distribution Corporation (NF) set out to build an AM/FM/GIS
system that would automate our key mapping records and provide a base for future
enhancements. An important design criterion was and continues to be cost. The unique
solution adopted by our team is a hybrid raster/vector mapping system. NF scanned, warped,
and edge-matched nearly 5000 maps at a scale of 1”=200’ in New York and 2000 maps in
Pennsylvania. A two-year backlog of as-built gas mainline updates was drafted
electronically on to the raster base maps. The vector gas mainline symbols carry attribution
such as project number, size, test pressure, and other important information. NF completed
map conversion of the New York and Pennsylvania distribution maps this past year. Once
completed the team began to look for opportunities to enhance the basic system with
applications that could provide quick payback. Global Optimization is one such application
that is built on the existing AM/FM/GIS system.
The system
NF’s AM/FM/GIS system is built on Intergraph’s FRAMME running on Windows NT 4.0.
The system was moderately customized with a graphical front end to our work management
and cost tracking system. The FRAMME application was the most costly part of application
development since it required custom programming. The resulting customized application
handles our mapping and workflow needs quite well. View only users access the system
using Intergraph’s Field View program. For map view users, we chose to use the out-of-the-box
Field View functionality and keep the cost of development very low. These two
applications formed the base of the system that is used for updating, printing and viewing our
operating maps.
In 1999 we added Intergraph’s Geomedia program for spatial analysis of various gas and
non-gas map features. Our team also intended to deploy this tool with minimal
customization and the correspondingly low cost. GeoMedia was chosen because it offered
built-in spatial query capability that would have required custom programming to develop in
FRAMME.
Other software that NF integrated into the system is from the Microsoft Office suite of
applications. The previous FRAMME version ran on UNIX, which had limited third party
software support. With the migration to Windows NT, we can use MS Access and MS Excel
as part of the analysis process in optimizing and planning gas mainline replacement. These
are very low cost tools with powerful analysis capability that can be used as they are
delivered. Only some simple macros and Visual Basic programs are needed to perform the
Global Optimization process.
The ‘tool box’
What NF was looking to do was to combine a number of existing and new methods of
pipeline project analysis and come up with a set of tools from these to optimize mainline
replacement planning. These tools were developed separately in time and then combined to
improve the evaluation process. These are PREP, Systematic Replacement, Leaks, and
Global Optimization, from the mainframe and AM/FM/GIS systems. We wanted to use
existing data and programs, albeit from different platforms, to efficiently evaluate
opportunities and focus capital replacement spending. At the same time we did not want to
engage in writing any expensive custom programs and interface sets. Global Optimization
would combine these existing programs and data into a ‘tool box’ for a very reasonable cost.
