Managing wireless networks in offshore production
Improved monitoring reduces operating costs
Stan DeVries, Hesh Kagan - Invensys Process Systems
Wireless communication promises higher production availability at lower operating costs through improved monitoring. For offshore production, wireless communication can accomplish this by combining mobile video and sensors to reduce costs in a number of ways:
- Operating costs drop because fewer personnel are required offshore. 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 means less transport to and from the platform, which minimizes transportation costs and reduces risk
- Improved one-way visibility increases production by enabling earlier and improved intervention. Specialists can multi-task among many assets
- Improved bi-directional visibility increases production by improving collaboration with remote specialists.
Safety
Wireless equipment used on offshore platforms must be certified to operate in environments where sparks from electronic equipment could cause harm. In European operations, equipment such as portable video cameras, wireless transceivers, and associated sensors must have EX hazardous environment certification from the European Union. The VisiWear installation in ConocoPhillips’ Ekofisk platform in the Norwegian continental shelf, for example, uses EX-rated wireless video cameras.
Security
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 characterization of the RF site, and the range on non-compatible RF devices all can interfere with wireless network performance.
Prevention for interference problems must be engineered into the network from its inception and must be covered by an enterprise-aware security and management model. Compounding the problem of contending with interference is the fact that effective wireless networking on an offshore production platform requires a combination of wireless standards.
The wireless industrial networking alliance (WINA) has developed guidelines for harmonizing the diverse wireless network standards required to enable various networks to keep traffic separate so that data transfer between networks only when the architecture requires it. Companies like Invensys, with its wireless technology partner Apprion, are applying the WINA model in products and engineering services that help offshore producers design, secure, and manage the lifecycle of offshore wireless installations. The objective is to manage all standards and associated security as a single, harmonized set.
Cost
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Volume 67 Issue 10
October 2007
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