Pinnacle Midstream taps Bedrock Automation’s control system for crude oil receipt and delivery points

Houston-based Pinnacle Midstream has selected the Bedrock Automation control system as the automation platform for its crude oil receipt and delivery points. The Bedrock system will aim to coordinate flow of product from partners, through the Pinnacle processing facilities and onto refiners and shippers.

“We are expanding to the meet the growing need for midstream services and need a secure way to centralize control of flow amongst our facilities,” said Mike Hillerman, VP of Engineering and Operations for Pinnacle. “The Bedrock system provides an economical solution in a small, easy-to-implement system that can coordinate edge control today, while also scaling easily and economically to the full DCS functionality we expect to need in the future. We also liked the rugged Bedrock housing, which will resist the dust that gets into everything around here.”

Formed by seasoned oil and gas industry professionals to meet market need for efficient, secure midstream management, Pinnacle installs and operates assets, which facilitate oil and gas production and transportation.  Pinnacle provides a suite of services, including measurement, storage, compression, treatment, processing and dehydration services to help partners ready products for market.

The Pinnacle implementation today populates the Bedrock pin-less backplane with ten I/O modules, including ten-channel universal I/O modules and a five-channel Ethernet module. The universal I/O modules connect to the field computers, which control flow at each storage tank, while the Ethernet I/O connects with edge devices and applications to mine data for subsequent planning and operational improvement. The Ethernet modules can also poll radios on wireless sensors simultaneously and support Power over Ethernet (PoE), which simplifies installation further by eliminating the need to run additional wiring to some of the devices.  

Bedrock control modules also integrate switching and other functionality usually relegated to external devices, reducing wiring and installation costs. The first Bedrock system went online early in 2017. Evaluation for additional is now underway.

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