New Model Needed for Oil, Gas Data Communications

“That way there are no holes in the data, which is important for regulatory reporting and analytical purposes,” said Sponseller.  

Kepware’s solution can be used to connect different drilling and production systems and devices, such as HMI software and .NET applications, devices that communicate with industry protocols such as PLCs and digital signal controllers (DSC), and in midstream, remote terminal units or flow computers that compute and store flow volumes and alarms.

The devices would act as monitors of equipment on a rig or wellsite – such as monitoring the vibrations and predicting when a piece of machinery will need maintenance before it breaks down – and also collect data from the operation itself. Examples of data being requested includes measurement while drilling data, which comes from sensors that are downhole with the drill bit as well as data on the rig such as weight on bit.

“In production, the same is true for monitoring the equipment like the artificial lift systems, pumps and valves as well as monitoring the production levels so that engineering can make decisions on how to increase performance or even shut in a well temporarily,” Sponseller noted.

Control Systems in O&G Systems ‘Very Different’

In manufacturing and process plants, control systems consist of the integration of HMI software, programmable logic controllers, distributed control systems, computers and a wide range of automation software through high-speed Ethernet communications.

However, control systems in geographically distributed oil and gas systems are very different. In these systems, SCADA is integrated with a more loosely integrated combination of control devices in the field, local HMI software, and wide-area communications that include wireless, fiber optic and telephone services, said Paine and Treat.

“In a typical manufacturing plant or even a refinery, you have a very defined space that is relatively manageable compared to a very spread out well field,” said Sponseller. “At a plant, it is not that difficult to run Ethernet cables throughout, connecting everything in real-time, where communications at millisecond speed is not an unreasonable request.”

However, it is not possible to run Ethernet out to all the sites for oil and gas operations, as well as water, waste water, and power transmission and distribution, due to limited bandwidths of radio, cellular and satellite.