Securing data while providing access to the right people is challenging in an onshore setting. Move the data offshore, where bandwidth is at a premium, and the challenges compound. Jennifer Pallanich looks into issues companies face in the offshore communications sector.
Offshore data typically needs to move from one place to another, usually rig to shore, to seabed and to drill bit. Each category poses its own challenges, notes Philippe Flichy, the digital oilfield technologies advisor for Baker Hughes' Beacon remote operations platform. For instance, the distance between rig and shore and the geographic location can dictate which and how those data are transmitted. The water column exerts both cold and pressure on meters meant to gather data subsea while the drill bit's very work creates high temperatures on top of increasing pressures and temperatures as operations move deeper into the ground.
To be effective, measuring equipment must be sensitive, yet it must be able to work under both extremes, Flichy says. And once it gathers the data it's tasked with acquiring, that data must travel back to the rig and be turned into useful information. That's part of the process that fascinates Flichy: turning mounds of data into what he calls ‘actionable' information.
‘There are only a certain number of things a clever person can track in parallel,' Flichy says. He cites the example of fighter pilots, who know their cockpits inside and out: the function of every button, every alarm, every screen. Yet, they are typically only able to take into consideration a certain amount of data at any given time, he says.
Flichy mentions an initiative with Verdande that uses case-based reasoning to turn the ‘flood of data' into something that is usable. Verdande and Baker Hughes, which owns a minority share of Verdande, are developing such models for the industry. As Verdande puts it, case-based reasoning works in much the same way as how humans interpret new situations and solve problems through recalling a previous similar situation and adapting the experience for use in the new situation.
Ultra-deepwater focused Pacific Drilling faces communications challenges that drillers in shallower water don't. For instance, the Gulf of Mexico has been heavily drilled and has a number of viable communications network options near shore. ‘But I can't tap into that because I'm so far offshore,' says Coy Wright, IT VP for Pacific Drilling. Instead, he says, the driller exclusively depends on VSAT or satellite communications. ‘My first challenge is the speed of light.'
There's quite a bit of distance to cover from the rig to the satellite and back down again, which creates a time lag, Wright notes.
And companies are asking for more information to be transmitted more frequently, especially in the aftermath of Macondo. ‘[They] want to have more information onshore and off the rig in the event there's an accident. That's the first step. Next, we will then use this data to prevent accidents, ensuring better collaborative decision making between offshore and onshore resources,' Wright says.
The multiple data sources – video from the rig, instrument readings from the rig, data on what the engines and power plants are doing, the functioning of the DP3 system, how fast the bit is turning, how much load and so forth – all needing to be transmitted off the rig pose part of the challenge. Factor in the need for all that to happen in a real-time environment, and a complicated picture emerges. ‘Doing it through VSAT communications is a challenge,' Wright says.
VSAT is now at the point where it's more reliable, Wright says. To further improve the reliability, the drilling contractor relies on a dual dome, or two-antenna, VSAT system. The dual system, which places one on the port side and one starboard, allows the rig to rotate to maintain DP stability without blocking both antennas from a satellite. ‘No matter which way the vessel is pointing, one of those antennas can get a clear view of the sky so we can have more reliable communications,' Wright says.
Pacific Drilling has the Pacific Bora drilling for Chevron offshore Nigeria, the Pacific Scirocco contracted to Total for drilling offshore Nigeria last year, the Pacific Mistral contracted for drilling offshore Brazil for Petrobras last year, and the Pacific Santa Anna preparing to drill in the Gulf of Mexico for Chevron beginning later this year. All four are sixth generation newbuilds, and two more sister rigs are due for delivery in 2013 from Samsung Heavy Industries.
‘These vessels are as much driven by software now as by the mechanical components in the past,' Wright says. That means it's vital to ensure the software environment is properly integrated so the rig can avoid non-productive time. Pacific Drilling used Athens Group to help manage the software environment on the newbuilds. ‘I've spent a lot of time on that lately,' Wright says.
On-rig infrastructure is evolving, Wright notes. Rigs historically haven't been cabled like buildings using structured cabling best practices. That is changing. By using structured cabling concepts for each rig, he says, it will be easier to carry out upgrades on the rigs as technology improves or when the operator holding the contract on the rig changes.
While a fiber optic transmission system can cost more when it comes to installing such a system on the seabed, the cost per megabyte is much lower. ‘Dropping fiber can make sense. It does make sense – people are doing it,' Giles Middleton, commercial director for Hermes Datacomms, says. ‘We know the trend to massive data all the time is just going to gather pace.'
In fact, he says, many companies believe tomorrow's data needs will justify the fiber optic infrastructure, so they might as well install it. ‘Fiber is becoming more pervasive.'
The range of offshore communications can be extended by combining fiber optic links to primary offshore sites with microwave links to secondary and temporary sites. ‘It's not a panacea because it is limited to permanent structures and there are backup issues. But we will see more of it in shallow water,' Middleton says.
Data access
Members from the various companies represented onboard a rig ‘all need access to some data, and you have to make sure on the rig that the proper person has access to the data,' says Paul Khayat, Eastern Mediterranean & Iraq managing director for energy solutions at Harris CapRock. A related focus is ensuring the secure transmission of the data to the proper groups onshore, he adds.
The goal, states Khayat, is to ‘prevent data leaving the company and people from the outside trying to get that data'.
Crew onboard rigs often want access to the internet during their free time. Maintaining security of internet use related to the jobs and operations of the rig while preventing recreational access to the internet from causing problems like virus attacks has also become the focus of many a company policy. There are a number of solutions, according to Khayat. One involves using a wired network onboard, as wired networks ‘are fairly easy to secure'. Another is wireless networks, which require smart cards, passwords and other additional means of protection.
‘This is similar to what you'd have onshore. The technology is the same, it's just a matter of applying it offshore,' Khayat points out. ‘The question is who manages that technology, who manages the credentials and security policies, and how are you going to manage it?' His company is one that provides such security services.
‘Technology is meant to get things done, but you have to define what your needs are, what your policies are, capture what you want to do. Then technology comes onboard and helps you implement your policies and helps you do what you need to do,' Khayat says. It doesn't work to approach the process in reverse, he adds.
‘You have companies that know what they want and you have companies that don't,' Khayat says. Some needs may specify ability for high-definition video conferencing with a dedicated link while another may seek basic internet access.
Yet another policy might restrict certain types of IP-enabled equipment – such as smart phones, iPads and the like – from being brought aboard.
‘Many people are bringing their own devices on the vessel now,' Wright says. They get access to a segregated area of bandwidth, Wright says. ‘That's a challenge because bandwidth is money. However big your office space or house is, you expand to fill the space. That goes for bandwidth as well. The crew would take up just about all the bandwidth that we could put out there.'
Pacific's policy has given business computers priority, leaving the remaining bandwidth available for guest and personal use.
One of the main challenges Middleton sees is ‘the huge disparity between the volumes of data that people need to move about and the bandwidth to do it on'.
There's simply not enough bandwidth to transfer the vast quantities of geophysical data that some companies need to move, either. ‘The rate of growth in bandwidth and the transmission technology is lower than the demand,' Middleton says. ‘So it's a tough business. We're coming up with tricks to help them, but they're just bandwidth junkies. They need more and more of it.'
It's been estimated that running a rig with an optimum amount of data flow would call for a communications link capable of providing continuous live video feed, or a minimum of about 15MB/s to meet current requirements of data, voice and video. ‘We're seeing a lot more use of video. Video is becoming massively important,' Middleton says.
A further concern is that satellite bandwidth has the distinction of being expensive, especially compared to the broadband services available onshore. As a result, Middleton says, there are companies operating in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico that have found it less expensive to use a helicopter to collect the data and bring it to shore at set intervals than trying to send the same data via satellite.
IT and internet are both viewed as a commodity onshore. ‘VSAT is not a commodity. It's expensive,' Khayat says. A finite number of satellites provide a fixed amount of capacity for offshore data transmission. ‘Unless you get more satellites, you don't get more bandwidth.'
Historically, the industry has relied on C and Ku band satellites for data transmission. More recently Ka band satellites have become available. While Ka offers ‘far higher' data rates than Ku, it is highly susceptible to rain fades, Middleton notes.
Other sectors, such as military, government and media, compete for satellite bandwidth. ‘They all use the same satellites,' Khayat points out. HD video requires further capacity on the satellites, jacking up costs and satellite resource scarcity. ‘They're all fighting for the same capacity for different needs on that satellite.'
Foul weather also brings out the weakness inherent in a plan that relies on satellites: rain fades.
Khayat notes that even though satellite communications may be considered expensive, they are nominal compared to deepwater dayrates. Those rates, he says, certainly come into play if a link isn't 99.9% available during drilling operations. Having to wait for link availability and stop a drilling operation, he says, means ‘oops, a half a million more you spent on the rig. What's the value of that link?'
Remote operations
The industry has begun relying on remote operations for several reasons, including the benefit of improved safety by placing fewer personnel onboard and decreased personnel costs by being able to hire fewer niche experts who can become available for an entire company's operations via real-time centers rather than being dedicated to one rig's operations.
‘The people tend to get more specialized' as the industry goes into deeper waters and drills ever deeper into the earth, Flichy says. Gathering such experts into one place and making them available to a wider audience is a logical step, he notes. As such, real-time operating centers have popped up all over the industry, with Houston home to more than a few. One is Baker Hughes' Beacon remote operations center.
There, the service company provides communications monitoring and access to engineers, Flichy notes, with Beacon offering redundancy so companies can transfer data even if a satellite goes down in the rain. In fact, he says, some clients use only the communications monitoring service. ‘Even if the Baker Hughes crew isn't on the rig, we're monitoring their real-time data communications.'
Irrespective of how the technical support portal has been contacted, all answers provided are documented in an online database for quality control and learning purposes, and they are traceable, Baker Hughes says. The technical support portal consists of three tiers. If a technical question has been raised as a ticket it arrives in tier 1. The personnel within tier 1 open a ticket, assign priority and answer generic technical questions. Personnel in tier 2 are experienced senior technical support advisors with broad knowledge of product line specific tools and services. According to Flichy, 80% of all incoming issues can be solved at the tier 2 level. If an issue is specific down to the ‘nuts and bolts' of a product or service, the issue will be assigned to tier 3. Personnel in tier 3 are subject matter experts of one or two product line specific tools and services.
Relying on a real-time operations center in a different country than where the drilling operations are underway can bring up another issue. Some countries have stipulated that certain information cannot be sent beyond the country's physical borders or beyond their international waters. As Middleton notes, there may also be limited communications infrastructure onshore. Operations in these countries require custom networks that link directly both with local onshore and international centers, and that separate data flows securely. ‘We provide the railway tracks and the other guys provide the train,' he says. OE
Data standards No well results from the efforts of a single company: there are multiple vendors on every rig. Some collect similar types of data. Others collect the same data. And some of the data must be exchanged not just between companies but also across different bits of software programs. Relying on standards based on XML allows the companies to exchange data with each other as well as onshore facilities without losing any fidelity in the original data.‘One of the important parts that people miss about standards is the efficiency gains,' says Jerry Hubbard, Energistics CEO. ‘Standards allow you to efficiently exchange information in a fashion that maintains data quality, eliminates data reconfiguration issues and may actually reduce personnel onboard.' Energistics – an upstream industry consortium dedicated to promoting open data exchange standards such as WITSML, PRODML and RESQML – facilitates the development and adoption of standards that exchange data from software program to software program or from data collection point to operation center in a seamless method. WITSML, for instance, is embedded in 40 products; 50 companies follow the drilling standard. In September 2011, Energistics released WITSML 1.4.1, and the next major release for the standard is slated for 2014. ‘We're now building our development roadmap for the next three years,' Hubbard says. PRODML, originally released in 2007, was expected to see an update for the production standard be released in the very near future based on change requests that have been made from companies like Saudi Aramco and BP Migas.  Hubbard says the change order requests ‘are really going to strengthen [PRODML] when we get those done.' The next version release for PRODML is expected in 2014.RESQML, or the reservoir standard, is starting to be commercialized now, Hubbard says, and he expects to start seeing products with the standard embedded in it by mid-2012. |
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