This issue should normally have appeared in time for the ONS – Offshore Northern Seas conference and exhibition. Unfortunately, along with numerous other events, ONS has been cancelled owing to the global Corona virus pandemic. The virus is also ruining business for the oil industry. “Handelsblatt”, Germany’s leading business newspaper, announced at the beginning of August that the five largest oil companies – Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP, Total and Chevron, often also referred to as “big oil” – reported turnover of more than 131 billion dollars between March and June this year and with it a massive loss in excess of 52 billion. Yet it isn’t only the pandemic which is causing headaches for oil and gas producers, not to mention the petrochemical sector. The climate change debate is being fought with increasing intensity worldwide and the calls for significantly lower consumption of fossil fuels are more emphatic than ever. This pressure to take action is doing more than simply forcing the industry to make more economical use of oil and gas as energy sources; it is also leading to a rethink regarding the development of new products, for instance in the area of electric mobility.
To put it briefly, the industry is up against some daunting challenges. At the same time, it must invest continuously in safe and efficient production processes in spite of the crisis. In this special issue of “cav – Prozesstechnik für die Chemieindustrie” and its English-language edition “cpp”, we describe a number of interesting products and solutions including high-integrity pressure protection systems, or HIPPS for short. HIPPS are the modern alternative to traditional relief and flare systems. The latter protect downstream facilities from damage by preventing a maximum pressure from being exceeded. The central role of the Simatic SIS compact here is explained with reference to a real example in our cover story on page 6. This dedicated safety control system was designed by Siemens as a safety instrumented system (SIS) based on the Simatic product portfolio.
Lukas Lehmann, Assistant Editor-in-Chief
