Case Study: United Lube Oil Company achieves rapid two‑week plant expansion and reduced CAPEX with Honeywell Universal Process Cabinets

UNILUBE Uses UPC for Expansion of Lube Oil Plant

United Lube Oil Company (UNILUBE), a Jubail-based petroleum refinery producing base oils, lubricants and specialty blends, faced a 2017 brownfield expansion that added 700 I/O points and required migration from a Yokogawa CS3000 to Honeywell Experion PKS — all during a two-week turnaround and with limited control room space. To meet this tight schedule UNILUBE selected Honeywell and its Universal Process Cabinet (UPC) solution.

Honeywell supplied 14 modular UPCs with UIO modules, fiber-optic links and a C300 controller, shifting marshalling to field-mounted Class1 Div2/Z2 cabinets to avoid a new control room and cut multicore cabling. The approach reduced engineering, FAT and commissioning time (test points dropped from five junctions to one), lowered CAPEX/OPEX, enabled simultaneous I/O commissioning across areas, completed the expansion within the turnaround, and — per UNILUBE — has operated for a year with no system downtime.

United Lube Oil Company