Page 90: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Sep/Oct 2015)

89 91

and space requirements and gave the user reliability needed to data sources to a given set of user groups/ optimize production. decision makers located remotely. Sensor networks embedded within the physical

Routing trafc equipment confguration of a facility allow- ing real-time 24/7 signal transfer between

In the case of the rig in the Gulf of Mexico, it had a series of boats

Wireless to the an identifed set of units will have major or helicopters coming in for docking or landing. The rig needed to

Automation monitor and have communications with them and the company contributions on the technical and safety didn’t want to reconfgure the network whenever one vehicle left integrity assurance processes. or joined the area. rescue offshore

Slip in efciency One way to create a better communications forum, they felt,

Average production effciency dropped in was to create a wireless network around the rig.

the past decade, while the performance “We created a ‘bubble’ around one of the largest oil rigs in the gap between industry leaders and other Gulf of Mexico,” Byles says. “They had fotillas of maintenance companies widened, from 22% in 2000 boats and all kinds of boats coming in and out, helicopters land- to 40% in 2012, according to a McKinsey ing. They couldn’t communicate with them very well as they & Co. report. were getting closer to the rig or leaving the rig.”

Benchmarking data also illustrates The rig operator deployed about fve portable wireless nodes the broad opportunity for improvement. on the oil rig, one on the top and one on each corner of the rig.

Best-in-class players do not incur higher These nodes were not fxed points, users could move them with- costs to improve production effciency, out any changes in network confgurations.

and high performance does not link to “We created the ‘bubble’ around the rig and they put the nodes a specifc asset type or the maturity of on all the vehicles that had to communicate with the rig. When assets. Instead, companies with high they came within a mile or two they could communicate with the production effciency are often similar in rig just like they had run a wire to the boat, and on the boat they their quality of operations, approach to could have WiFi or wired access to the rig,” Byles says. “And eliminating equipment defects, equip- they could communicate to other vehicles with a node as well. ment choices, and planning and execu- All of a sudden you have a web of connections around the rig at a

A kenetic mesh network in action on and

Communication is key, even tion of shutdowns, the report said. very high speed and not have to worry about a connection going ofshore oil and gas rig. Image from Rajant Corp.

Regardless of location, most oil and down as long as they were within the range.” ofshore. Gregory Hale examines gas producers face issues that complicate oil out they might not have seen before. They can ensure no lost communication because the wire- how wireless can improve efforts to achieve sustained production- “That itself would save (producers) a less nodes use multiple frequencies so they can direct the data operational efciencies.

effciency improvements. few thousand barrels a day,” he says. “It packet — whether it was voice, video or data in any direction.

The node is a multi-radio box with a motherboard and software. is very quick to see the operational eff- Let’s face it, in large and complex gas producer offshore needed to ciency. It pays for itself in under a year offshore facilities, it is impossible to “In that box, you have different radios running on different fre- modernize an aging 30-year-old and sometimes within a month.” install a fully featured physically wired quencies. There could be a 900 MHz radio, 2.4 GHz radio, or a 5.8

A wellhead platform off Southeast As offshore operations demand smarter network to oversee what is going on 24/7.

GHz radio or even a 4.9 GHz radio. What that provides is the abil-

Asia to optimize output of its wells. and cost-effective application solu- A wireless sensor network can help bring ity to mitigate interference and to take on different propagations,”

An oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico needed tions, the traditional practices relating to about real-time monitoring and automatic

Byles says. “You have all these different frequencies to work with, as you move all these boats around there may be interference on to coordinate traffc coming into and physical equipment are changing. Along control of vital applications. the 900 so you might be able to pass data using the 2.4 or the 5.8.” going out of the vicinity of the platform. those lines, wireless is handling condi- The oil industry wants private net- works where producers can get data off tion surveillance, machine-to-machine These are two separate scenarios, but the “(The rig) was able to provide a mobile network and there was and on the oil rigs. communication, smart sensors and data producers knew the most economic and no real confguration, no need to maintain any routing cable, transfer techniques. effcient answer was wireless. and no controller to worry about. Each node was a piece of the

Wireless in action

According to a paper written by Malka In an environment where a barrel of infrastructure. The more you put into the mesh, it became stron-

In the case of the Southeast Asia plat-

N. Halgamuge and Priyan Mendis from oil dropped from its heady days of over ger and stronger. The data overhead continued to remain low, forms, the platform is a hub with 16 active the University of Melbourne, Australia US$100 to hovering in the $40-50 range, sub one millisecond between mesh nodes and there was no limit wellheads as well as production headers and Jayantha P. Liyanage, from the Center producers have to fnd all the effciencies to how many mesh nodes you could use,” Byles says. from four nearby platforms, with power for Industrial Asset Management at the it can get. Wireless is one way to pull in The oil industry is going through some tough times, and it generation equipment to support the fve

University of Stavanger, Norway, such as much data as possible to glean more needs real-time answers to complex problems.

In the end, it always ends up being about platforms. If there is an issue on any of the communication. There visibility into what is going on and help an intelligent environment will end up feld in platforms, production losses could last for are solutions to those problems; whether it is a remote gas squeeze out ineffciencies. based on three principal components: 1.

Southeast Asia or routing traffc into and round a rig in the Gulf of days. As they say, time is money. “It is all about operational effciencies Smart sensors that continuously or

Mexico, wireless automation can provide answers. right now,” says Kirk Byles, vice presi- periodically monitor the condition of a As a result, the producer implemented dent of Rajant Corp. “You put the rigs given item automatically, and transfer a mixture of wired and wireless devices during the retroft to optimize monitoring signals to receiving units on the health of together and they cost billions of dollars Gregory Hale is the editor and founder of and control of the platform while keeping the item. and they have to get the oil and how do Industrial Safety and Security Source 2. power limited. Data processing and analysis solu- you make things more effcient. (ISSSource.com) and is the contributing

Wireless instruments now monitor tions that compile complex data within “Part of the effciency is the commu- Automation editor at Offshore Engineer.

nications piece,” he says. “It can just be designated units, process and analyze wellhead status on all 16 wells of the as simple as reading a monitoring station them for feature/pattern recognition. hub, as well as gas receiving for all fve 3. Advanced data transfer and communi- or meter that says we need to put more platforms, production headers, and the cation channels that connect a given set of pressure on the down pipes to get more fuel skid. The plan minimized power

September 2015 | OE oedigital.com 92 092_OE0915_Automation.indd 92 8/20/15 10:37 AM