OIL REFINERIES & SECONDARY CLOCK PROBLEM
Following is from Bruce Beach ...
I have been working for months on getting an interview with a Petroleum Refinery Engineer. Happened Wednesday ...
greenspun.com
The Embedded Processor SECONDARY Clock Problem
BY BRUCE BEACH
"I am a former college professor of computer science, and hold both U.S. and Canadian microprocessor patents. The particular application that this paper discusses is oil refineries. I spent one summer as a NUL Fellow with the Chevron Chemical Company, and was at one time a consultant to the Imperial Oil Company, both times in regards to computer systems."
HIS "OFF THE RECORD" COMMENTS:
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The interview is on record, and was done by an Independent TV Producer under contract for an affiliate of ABC. However, I will not identify the oil company here because I was allowed to ask off record as many questions as I wished.
MY FIRST QUESTION WAS: "How serious is the problem?"
I was surprised by the answer. Approximately 25% of the relevant systems had problems. I had only heard such a high figure before from Westergaard. Usually, the figures given have lain between 1% and 7%. I have always used a median figure of 3%. So, this certainly increased my already high respect for Westergaard as a source for reliable information.
MY SECOND QUESTION WAS: "How many systems are we talking about".
The answer, in a large refinery, several thousand. There are of course tens of thouands, maybe even hundreds of thousand of chips, but the Relevant chips, the ROMs and Microprocessors, and such as I have described, amount to 2 or 3 thousand. The Engineer also made it very clear, that he was NOT talking about chips in PC,s or in Fax machines, or photocopiers, or in the office accounting systems, but STRICTLY in the process controllers of the plant.
MY THIRD QUESTION WAS: "How do you go about determining if a system is compliant or not".
The answer is, that first it is determined if a system is CRITICAL or ESSENTIAL to the process. Secondly it is determined if the system needs to be Y2K COMPLIANT or just Y2K READY. (Y2K ready systems are systems that will put out a wrong date but that date is not critical to the operation of the system).
Many of the devices that we are talking about are PLC's. (Programmed Logic Controllers) and I was eager to look at a PLC. So, what does one look like? Well, many of them are a metal box, about the size of a brick. In fact, at this facility at least, that is their nickname for them, "the brick". But others can be the size of a bread box and others as large or perhaps a bit larger than a large home refrigerator.
The PLC is often located right adjacent to the electro/mechanically driven valve with which it associated and the size of the valve is determined by the size of the pipe which it is on. The valve on a 36 inch pipe is of course quite large, but there are many, many smaller pipes with valves, and associated PLC,s throughout the refinery. The size of the PLC has no direct relationship to the valve, but rather to the complexity of the tasks which it controls.
Now comes the interesting part, as it was explained to me. These PLC,s are NEVER tested on-line. EACH and EVERYONE of them is removed from the system, and taken off-line for testing ...
And then this just in THIS MORNING from the API, with some of whose managers I have personally spoken and whom I personally regard as one of my most UNRELIABLE sources of information - right up there with NERC and some of the government sources which is why I go out and do all this checking myself, in the first place. Anyway, look at this:
"One key discovery in the survey was that embedded chips do not pose a significant problem for the industries, said Ron Quiggins, director, Year 2000 Program, Shell Services Corporation and chairman of the API Year 2000 Task Force, said. "We're not finding the embedded chip failures that we thought we had." . . . ."
You can check my source for yourself: api.org
So, how come, Ron Quiggins, you don't find problems, when this other big oil company that I interviewed does? And Ron, what is wrong with those guys at Texaco? Did you read this month's all black cover "Lights Out" issue of "Wired Magazine", (page 130). What would you consider a significant problem? Somebody is either lying or stupid, and I know that I am not lying, so I hope that you will really write to me and tell me where my stupidity lies. The sooner I get smart, the happier I will be.
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Cheryl
Message 8334434
MORE FROM BRUCE ...
The SMOKING GUNS of Y2K
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The SMOKING GUNS of Y2K are the Control Nets of the Power Distribution Grid, the Natural Gas Grid, the Liquid Petroleum Products Grid, the Railroad Grid and the Telecommunications Networks themselves. This REPORT, a work in progress, is here updated as of January 23rd, 1999. It includes the latest information I have been able to find. If you have additional PERSONAL knowledge, or more recent DOCUMENTABLE information, please send it to me survival@webpal.org
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