Compañía Española de Petróleos (CEPSA) Streamlines Scheduling Workflows With Integrated Refinery Scheduling and Blending

• Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)

• Oil & Gas

• Discrete Manufacturing
• Logistics & Transportation

• Predictive Maintenance
• Fleet Management

• System Integration
• Training

CEPSA, an integrated energy company, was looking to create a solution that would involve various business units in a coordinated way to optimize the global margin by establishing an integrated management model. Prior to the corporate initiative to improve the business processes in CEPSA, schedulers had been using homemade tools based on Excel files that were managed and reported by each individual scheduling stakeholder in a refinery. Since this method of scheduling provided no collaboration, there was little to no interaction among schedulers, causing inefficiencies and lost opportunities within CEPSA’s refineries to execute on the optimal plan. Additionally, because the spreadsheets were standalone, they provided no integration with Aspen PIMS (CEPSA’s planning solution since 2014), creating siloed departments and a disconnect between planning and operations.

Compañía Española de Petróleos, S.A.U. (CEPSA) is an integrated energy company operating at every stage in the oil and gas value chain. Headquartered in Madrid, Spain with more than 10,000 employees, CEPSA is the fourth-largest industrial group in Spain. The company has over 90 years of experience in the development of large-scale projects in different phases of the oil and gas value chain, both nationally and internationally. The company is engaged in petroleum and natural gas exploration and production activities, refining and the transport and sale of crude oil derivatives, petrochemicals, gas and electricity. Thanks to its flexibility and ability to adapt, CEPSA has become a benchmark company in its sector in Spain. The company operates on five continents through progressive internationalization of its activities, with business interests in several European countries as well as Algeria, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Panama, Peru and Portugal.

CEPSA decided to move forward with AspenTech as the vendor for their refinery scheduling and blending solution. AspenTech already had a long-standing strategic partnership with CEPSA, providing solutions in petroleum supply chain to their organization. The integration of Aspen PIMS with Aspen Petroleum Scheduler and Aspen Refinery Multi-Blend Optimizer would provide CEPSA with shared common assay data, unit sub-models, blending correlations and planning targets (key process indicators, or KPIs). Another driver was the integration between rigorous models with Aspen HYSYS®, planning models in Aspen PIMS and scheduling with Aspen Petroleum Scheduler and Aspen Refinery Multi-Blend Optimizer. These capabilities and features aligned with the corporate objectives to automate and integrate the different processes in the planning cycle. CEPSA implemented AspenTech refinery scheduling and blending solutions at both the La Rábida and GibraltarSan Roque refineries sequentially. A phased approach was taken in a four-step process that took approximately 12 months per site.

• Aspen Petroleum Scheduler and Aspen Refinery Multi-Blend Optimizer are now embedded and critical to CEPSA’s business processes in La Rábida and Gibraltar-San Roque refineries.
• AspenTech’s refinery scheduling and blending solutions have provided a comprehensive refinery-wide view of the schedule, from crude receipts to product shipments, enabling schedulers to make more informed and quicker scheduling decisions.
• This improved visibility into the true operations has saved schedulers time gathering information and inputting data, allowing more time for analyzing to make the most profitable decision.

• Reduced the gap between planning and scheduling by 90 percent
• Reduced quality giveaway by 70 percent
• Reduced demurrage by 20 percent