Wireless communication promises higher production availability at lower operating costs through improved monitoring. For offshore production, it can accomplish this by combining mobile video and new sensors to reduce costs in a number of ways.

Operating costs drop because fewer offshore personnel will be needed. Most drilling and production personnel would be able to perform their duties onshore, drawing on information from an expanded array of sensors and collaborating with a few platform workers via mobile video cameras. Fewer platform workers will mean less transport to and from the platform, minimising transportation costs, and reducing risk.

In addition, improved one-way visibility will increase production by enabling earlier and better intervention. Specialists can be mobilised earlier and can multi-task better among many wells, many fields, and many assets. Improved bi-directional visibility increases production by enabling better collaboration with remote, travelling specialists.

Previously, however, wireless solutions were not viable for offshore monitoring for many reasons. The technology was still emerging and security was variable at best. Standards were incomplete or were often in conflict with one another, and wireless frequencies and communications protocols clashed as well.

There was also general concern that wireless communications were not yet robust enough for industrial strength communications and there was no clear migration path. The applications that did exist were tactical and not extensible and few if any information technology organisations were prepared to provide comprehensive support. And because so much uncertainty surrounded this newly emerging technology, determining the true cost of operations was all but impossible.

Today, much has changed. Advances in safety, security, affordability, and maintainability within the constraints of frequency allocation now enable energy companies to take full advantage of wireless technology for challenging offshore production environments.

Safe and secure wireless

Wireless equipment used on an offshore platform must have certification for operating in environments in which sparks from electronic equipment could cause harm. Equipment such as portable video cameras, wireless transceivers, and associated sensors must have EX hazardous environment classification. The VisiWear installation in ConocoPhillips’ giant Ekofisk platform in the Norwegian continental shelf, for example, uses EX-rated wireless video cameras.

The greatest threat to wireless security is not malicious attack, but interference from overlapping wireless networks.

Environmental or accidental radio frequency (RF) noise, broken RF equipment, dynamic changes in the characterisation of the RF site, and the range on
non-compatible RF devices generally available all can interfere with the performance of wireless networks.

Prevention of such problems must be engineered into the network from its inception, and must be covered by an enterprise-aware security and management model.
Adding to the challenge is the fact that effective wireless networking on an offshore production platform will require a combination of wireless standards. One size does not fit all. Fig.1 illustrates where wireless solutions might apply on an oil platform.
The wireless industrial networking alliance (WINA) has developed guidelines for harmonising the diverse wireless network standards required, and enabling the various networks to keep traffic separate and transfer data between networks only when the architecture requires.

Companies such as Invensys, with its wireless technology partner Apprion, are applying the WINA model in products and engineering services that help offshore producers to design, secure, and manage offshore the lifecycle of offshore wireless installations. The approach is to manage all standards and associated security as a single, harmonised set.

Wireless networking is now affordable for offshore production platforms. The cost of low-power wireless network components, including battery-powered, hazardous environment sensors, and RTUs to equip an entire platform, would fit comfortably within the budget of most offshore operations.

Combined with long-range radio modems and gateways such as from vMonitor, which are also quite affordable, many platforms can afford to add sensors at process points that would not even have been thinkable with wired networks.

Wireless networks for offshore applications are also more maintainable than before. It is now easier to troubleshoot, expand, modify, and upgrade the networks and the components without jeopardising security and availability. Such improvement comes from the use of a single systems management approach that treats and manages all wireless network technology in a unified, coherent architecture. Such a framework helps technical professionals to manage the diversity consistently.

A unified architecture

Creating unified systems management is not just good practice; companies that attempt to implement more than a few tactical solutions without a unifying plan are taking a great risk. The following are some steps that oil and gas producers can do to take full advantage of wireless technology today and tomorrow:

o Survey the entire company to determine who has need for wireless technologies and how the need plays into the business strategy, examining at every point the strategic trade-offs between improving asset availability and asset utilisation.

o Design a technology architecture that will encompass all stakeholders, including operations, safety, security, maintenance, and information technology.

o Create a policy manual that sets clear criteria for implementing a wireless solution.

o Select and purchase hardware and software that is proven, scalable, and capable of understanding diverse protocols.

o Prior to implementation, conduct an RF site survey to identify wireless signal paths and sources of potential interference.

o Build ongoing maintenance, support, and optimisation services into the plan.
Few companies have the resources to maintain staff necessary for all of these steps, especially because demand for specialists with relevant skills is very high. As such, outsourcing to one of the emerging specialist firms may be the most cost effective strategy for companies that want to enjoy the benefits of wireless networking most immediately with the least risk.

No matter how well constructed the systems management architecture, however, tapping the full potential to increase oil and gas production and reduce costs will require fundamental changes in the way in which oil and gas production teams collaborate. This includes improved collaboration on normal production and drilling tasks along with collaboration on entirely new solutions for managing challenges such as flow assurance, equipment behaviour, and major weather disturbances, enabled by unprecedented visibility into operations.

Instead of just ‘reacting better’, the new visibility will enable teams to work ‘smarter’. This will impact when teamwork begins, where team members are located, which team members perform which roles, and how they actually interact.

Deploying additional sensors to drive software that forecasts and recognises conditions and threat levels will change when collaboration begins. Instead of bringing people to the problem, the sensors and software will bring the problem to the people. The software senses conditions and trends more quickly, enabling collaboration on problems to begin much earlier than before, even at the point of prevention. This is even earlier than ‘real time’.

These additional sensors combine with wireless voice and video communications to change where collaboration takes place. Travelling specialists will be able to collaborate effectively with roaming workers on the platform, as well as with others in a centralised operations or collaboration centre. And this impacts which people are collaborating by allowing less-specialised or less-experienced personnel to intervene more often, guided remotely by using advice from experts, without having to call the experts as often or delaying action until the experts are able to become available physically.

Wireless communications will also change how production teams collaborate by enabling more proactive solutions augmented by voice and video. The energy they had previously devoted to overcoming time and distance constraints can now by applied to improving production and collaboration tools and methods. And, as sensor data from additional process points begins to be incorporated into operations, solutions and training simulators will become even more accurate and more proactive.

A new, standards-based approach to wireless network systems management, combined with advances in reducing costs and operating in hazardous environments, makes wireless communications extremely feasible for offshore production platforms.
Producers will increase production and reduce operating costs by transforming when, where, which, and how people collaborate in meeting production challenges.

And although the unified management framework is essential for the success of wireless communications, it will fail if it becomes merely an exercise in collecting more data for the sake of collecting more data, or collaboration for the sake of collaboration. Even as affordable as wireless networking has become, it is still overpriced if it isn’t implemented in the context of the business strategy.

Stan DeVries is Industry Solution Architect with Invensys Process Systems, Foxboro, Massachusetts, USA.