Colin Thurston and Kevin Smith outline how important laboratory information management systems (LIMS) are in the drive to reduce costs and increase productivity, while ensuring optimum product quality and regulatory compliance

Mounting and diverging pressures in exploration and production are being faced by the oil and gas industry. Organisations have to maximise the yield from each well, increase throughput and efficiency, and lower costs, all while maintaining regulatory compliance.

In order to achieve this, operational processes are controlled by rigorous testing and real-time monitoring. Laboratory information management systems (LIMS) play a key-role in managing this effort. With the capacity to automatically capture and process sample data, LIMS provide rapid feedback to the field operations within the fast turnaround time required during oil and gas exploration and production.

Trends in analysis

Large oil and gas companies increasingly have to locate their exploration and production processes in harsh and isolated areas because of the ever-growing competition for natural resources. The considerable escalation in difficulty and costs associated with these operations intensify the already complex problems of analysis of oil and gas during exploration and production.

Furthermore, oil and gas companies are monitoring field operations more closely as they strive to increase efficiency in order to remain competitive. As a consequence, there has been a surge in the number of analyses and samples that are run, leading to a need for efficient data management.

For example, crude oil data such as salt and water content is crucial in oil well classification and plays an essential role in planning and maintaining daily oil production rates. Additionally, hydrocarbon gas and condensate composition data ensure that plant processes are monitored and optimised to high standards.

As deposits may intrude and plug wells, halting production, it is imperative that the presence of any sub-quality deposits, such as scales, solids and sludge are identified. While real-time laboratory information assists in the design and implementation of corrective procedures for control and removal of these deposits, a comprehensive solution is required in order to manage and interpret the data.

In addition, strict industrial and environmental regulations must be adhered to by oil and gas exploration and production companies. For example, the 2005 release of ISO 17025 “general requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories” greatly affected oil and gas analytical laboratories.

This international standard is the accepted benchmark for analytical laboratories in developing their management system for quality, administrative and technical operations. Applicable to all organisations performing tests and/or calibrations as well as laboratories where testing and/or calibration forms part of inspection and product certification, the regulation covers laboratories using standard, non-standard and laboratory-developed methods.

A comprehensive LIMS solution provides oil and gas exploration and production companies with a solution that enables them to address the difficult analytical problems as well as comply with the relevant regulations. In order to enable operators and managers to make business-critical decisions such a system must store and analyse data quickly and effectively. As well as capturing and safely storing data in real-time the LIMS must distribute data in an effective manner to key operational decision-making personnel. In addition, the solution should be capable of providing smooth integration with multiple other systems, tools and processes.

Dramatic improvements

The integration of LIMS in oil and gas analytical laboratories has revolutionised the way they operate. Previously, analytical results were entered by hand using paper notebooks and transcribed into spreadsheets, a particularly time-consuming and error-prone procedure considering the multiple analyses carried out on a vast amount of samples on a daily basis. Lengthy rechecks were also required to verify the validity of data. Data was often communicated by telephone, or sometimes fax, again with the potential for introducing errors to the reporting.

Integration of LIMS with existing laboratory and business systems, such as process information management systems (PIMS), manufacturing execution systems (MES) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, has replaced these protracted and risky procedures with sophisticated, automatic data transfer that eliminates error caused by manual procedures and allows more data to be utilised by more decision makers for more efficient operations. 

The laboratory and operational productivity benefits of a LIMS include elimination of human error and data duplication, better data quality, considerable time savings and earlier generation of result reports. In addition, immediate data flow between the laboratory and the rest of the operations facilitates faster, data-driven business decision-making.

By centralising and consolidating IT and technical support personnel, enterprise-wide LIMS integration lowers the total cost of ownership significantly. Standardising on a central LIMS allows organisations to store SOPs, specification limits and have immediate alerts sent out when a sample tests out of specification. An integrated LIMS approach helps companies identify trends and monitor product quality more rapidly with greater ease, dramatically improving their overall quality control process and maintaining the highest quality standards.

A comprehensive LIMS solution such as Thermo Scientific SampleManager LIMS also facilitates compliance with ISO 17025 regulations. The LIMS covers a broad range of requirements, including validation of methods, instrument calibration, sampling, control of non-conformance testing and reporting of results. Full security controls segregate work from different facilities and laboratory areas.

In addition, the laboratory’s quality system procedures are stored in the LIMS for reference at any time by relevant personnel, including a documentation of the scope of activities, all policies and procedures, as well as results. The laboratory’s quality system can be easily reviewed by having ready access to all incidents, corrective actions, non-conforming results and other events.

Compliance is also achieved with SampleManager’s built-in functionality for incident management and statistical analysis of calibration standards and sample results. Equipment and instrument calibration, an important component of ISO 17025, is managed by the LIMS and alerts management and operators when instruments are out of compliance or need calibration.

Exploration and production

Thermo Fisher Scientific has worked with many of the leading global oil and gas companies to complete enterprise-wide deployments of its LIMS with the aim of reducing costs and increasing productivity, while ensuring optimum product quality and regulatory compliance.

A large oil company with subsidiaries in Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Nigeria, USA and 98 offshore oil platforms uses SampleManager LIMS in its fluids laboratory. 

The company’s laboratory monitors and reports on the quality of raw material for production, quality of exported oil, auditing of oil measurements, environment and integrity of pipes that support the exploration of new oil fields. The company required a LIMS that could offer ISO 17025 compliance and make the fluids laboratory a best practice operation for quality, timing and performance.

SampleManager LIMS has been able to meet these requirements, ensuring maximum reliability of data, analysing samples within the expected timeframes, improving the efficiency of the laboratory process, optimising service costs and achieving ISO 17025 compliance. Following implementation, customer satisfaction with the service provided by the fluids laboratory within the organisation increased from 68 per cent to 99 per cent.

Conclusion

Oil and gas companies undertaking exploration and production activities are facing increasing pressure to improve oil and gas field yields and overall productivity while adhering to stringent product quality and environmental regulations and minimising their operational costs. Conducting accurate, frequent monitoring to monitor the quality and effectiveness of their products as well as processes in order to remain competitive against their clients and within regulatory guidelines are proving time-consuming and labour intensive.

With the introduction of LIMS, global oil and gas companies can achieve reduced costs and increased productivity, while ensuring optimum product quality and regulatory compliance. With the elimination of human error and redundant data, overall laboratory efficiency is enhanced and regulatory requirements are met. Enterprise-wide deployment of LIMS can help achieve real-time dissemination of information to the enterprise’s decision makers.

Colin Thurston is director of product strategy, process industries, informatics at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Kevin Smith is director of global partner sales, informatics, at Thermo Fisher Scientific