Introduction
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is one of the world’s largest hydrocarbon markets, with around 50 percent of total global crude oil reserves and over 40 percent of its gas deposits. The growing need to meet international and local energy demands has led to significant investments in the oil and gas sector over the past several years. These investments strengthened Saudi Arabia’s position as one of the most prominent oil exporter globally and drove Qatar as the largest natural gas producer in the region.
Both people and equipments are exposed to harsh environments in the oil and gas industry. Thus, remote operation, inspection of facilities, monitoring of leaks, and servicing of equipments are some of the critical routine tasks of the industry. At the same time, enhancing operational efficiency is of extreme importance for this capital intensive industry, and as a result, oil & gas operators have been digitizing several aspects of their value chain (upstream, mid-stream and down-stream). Technologies including M2M, IoT, cloud computing and robotics among others has been instrumental in digitally transforming the industry over the years. Moreover, the increasing adoption of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual reality (VR), and edge computing are helping operators in achieving optimum performance, while minimizing safety risks in digital oil fields. However, proliferation of these technologies has led to exponential growth of data traffic levels and the need for real-time communication, that existing legacy networks are incapable to deliver. 5G, offering massive machine-type communication, high bandwidth and ultra-low latency, combined with the network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) techniques is steadily becoming a cornerstone of future oil & gas networks and further enabling several new mission critical applications in the sector.
Key areas that 5G can be used to improve services:
Voice: Traditional communication systems between remote oil and gas facilities to the shore or surrounding facilities are depended on very expensive satellite links. A major satellite link connects the offshore platform, while separate links are required for each surrounding vessels. However, satellite links provide only voice communications with the range limited only to a few miles and does not support data and video transmission. With advancement in telecommunication technologies, digital radio communication surfaced providing comparatively faster and reliable communications between specific groups or individuals. As the demand for more efficient mission critical voice communication continues to grow, the oil and gas industries can benefit from 5G network’s high availability, reliability and quality of service. Moreover, 5G with network slicing techniques will enable prioritization of mission critical voice communication with high bandwidth and low delay or jitter.
Use Case: Push-to-Talk service
Push-to-talk (PTT) has been serving the voice communication needs of the industry for decades. PTT systems provide instant communication between supported devices, allowing instructions and information to be relayed quickly and efficiently. Along with managing daily operations, it also provides an effective communication platform at the time of any emergency. Traditionally the service was delivered over Land Mobile Radio (LMR) network, which is narrowband and low capacity. The proliferation of wireless technologies like LTE and WLAN led to the emergence of broadband PTT and mission-critical PTT (MCPTT) services, helping in making communication possible for wider range and areas. However, the current LTE networks are yet to guarantee the compliance parameters as defined by 3GPP for MCPTT. Moreover, several new developments in the industries are changing the dynamics of push-to-talk, making it more useful. Few major enhanced PTT services include group calls, transmission of texts, images, videos, and files with individuals or groups, voice and signaling encryption, talker priority, and geo-location sharing across compatible devices among others. PTT services have been costly to design, deploy and service, and without a fundamental redesign, delivery of advanced PTT services is not feasible. With enterprises looking to negate the need for costly modification of network infrastructure, service providers started implementing PTT over cloud services. In particular, oil & gas industry with large mobile workforces can benefit from the cost-effectiveness, speed, and convenience of cloud based PTT service. One of the important requirements of these enhanced PTT services is the need for high uptime or availability of the network. Ultra-high reliability and ultra-low latency of 5G network are capable of addressing the uptime requisite, making 5G the voice communication network choice in the oil & gas sector.
Data: Oil & gas operators remotely monitor multitude of sensor based data points such as temperature, levels of volume, pressure, flow rates, and operating status of various equipments at tank, well, and pipeline facilities. In this regard, the industry is witnessing significant growth in installation of massive number of wireless devices and sensors, which is mostly powered with low power wide area (LPWA) network solutions like Sigfox, LoRa, NB-IoT and LTE-M. The several sensing and control capabilities provided by LPWA technologies are enabling automation of wellhead and pipeline operations. Operators are also implementing IoT solutions for linking devices together across multiple plant locations and establish a distributed environment for centralized monitoring and control of oilfield operations. However, when compared to the level of automation present in other industries, like automotive, the oil and gas sector has further scope of improvement. As the industry continues to go after greater efficiency and production speed, data intensive applications are expected to grow significantly and thus the need for higher bandwidth 5G networks. Moreover, 5G along with SDN and NVF has the potential to serve several IoT use cases for the industry like asset tracking and monitoring, gas detection and prevention, predictive and preventive maintenance, etc.
Use Case: Gas detection and prevention
Leakage detection has been essential part of the oil & gas industries for preventing accidents and avoiding malfunction of equipments. In this regard, sensors are deployed capable of collecting information about unwanted gas leaks to avoid losses of human as well as other infrastructures. It is important to make available the information collected from these sensors to operators for real-time monitoring. Moreover, these systems are not only capable of generating alerts but also providing information to actuators to act automatically in order to stop the leakage and mitigate the consequences. Existing systems commonly uses WiFi-based mesh networking combined with low power consumption technologies like Zigbee for exchange of data between nodes over a small area. 5G will enable long distances communication – transmitting sensor data from remote offshore locations to onshore facilities for centralized monitoring in an efficient way. Advantage of 5G mobile network over existing communication technologies like Wifi and 4G is the higher data transmission rate, lower end-to-end latency, ability to connect massive number of connection points, and consistent quality of experience.
Video: Remote security monitoring of critical infrastructure through CCTV cameras and recorders is hugely important in oil & gas industries. In addition to providing continuous video feeds, it also reduces the requirement of physical visits to remote sites. Over the years, CCTV cameras have predominantly moved to IP network. Also, demand for better quality images and faster streaming have grown in the video security surveillance sector across industries including oil & gas. Video surveillance networks are initially deployed through wired infrastructure, predominantly over fiber-optic cables due to high bandwidth requirement. However, fiber network installations are capital intensive and have coverage limitation especially in oil & gas industries which operates from remote location facilities. 5G network, capable of providing wider range of coverage, is bringing whole new array of opportunities for video security surveillance in this sector. Moreover, demand for highest level of availability, reliability, and speed for video surveillance systems have been growing over the years. As a result, the high bandwidth and ultra-low latency 5G network is becoming the key enabler of IP camera based remote video surveillance systems.
Use Case: Intelligent video surveillance systems
CCTV cameras when integrated with artificial intelligence capabilities are helping in improving the efficacy of video surveillance systems. By leveraging artificial intelligence, video surveillance systems are capable of offering innovative solutions like face recognition, object recognition, event recognition, intelligent image processing, remote asset management, behavioral detection, and analytics. Moreover, implementing multi-access edge computing (MEC) is allowing the processing of video data within the edge of AI enabled CCTV network. Instead of sending all video surveillance data to the cloud, MEC reduces security risk by processing the data locally and transferring filtered data to the cloud. This approach will help enterprises in cutting down cloud storage cost and improving bandwidth utilization efficiency. Implementing this solution in oil & gas industries can automate access to authorized personnel and also help in determining anomalies regarding worker safety without human intervention. Workers not complying with standard safety procedures can be identified automatically through this system, minimizing worker safety risks in oil & gas facilities. 5G network will facilitate the uptake of these intelligent systems in the oil & gas industry with its ability to provide massive machine type, highly reliable, and ultra-low latency communication.
Emerging use cases that 5G will enable:
- Industrial robots:
Robots are continuing to substitute human labor, particularly for repetitive tasks performed in industries. More importantly deployments of robots are reducing the risk of injury in hazardous environments of oil & gas industries, improving operational efficiency, and also cutting down labor costs. Currently, a majority of the oil & gas operators use Ethernet wired technology for deploying robots. However, the industry is gradually moving towards wireless connectivity since it is allowing flexible implementation and reconfiguration. The requirement of massive amount of intelligence for proper functioning of industrial robots is a major challenge. This in turn is leading to the growing need for implementation of complex machines and control systems for robots in industrial environment. Cloud robotics addresses these challenges by maintaining system intelligence in the cloud and simplified robotics on the ground. Moreover, efficiency and efficacy of industrial robots can be improved with the implementation of MEC solution. With this background, 5G network can play a key enabler role by connecting the cloud based system to the robots and their controllers.
- Drone:
Unmanned aerial platforms or more commonly termed as drones have become imperative for the oil and gas sector. This is mainly due to the emergence of various innovative use cases, following continuous advancement in drone technology over the past few years. Drones, capable of integrating various payloads, sensors, and imaging technologies, are increasingly used as an innovative tool to carry out operations like leak detection, corridor mapping, emergency response and recovery, etc. in the oil & gas sector. While improving safety through remote operations and control, drones also provide a cost-efficient alternative for operators to carry out these operations. Robust functioning of drones needs high-speed internet connectivity and 5G can support drones connectivity requirements using a dedicated network slice without any disruption.
- Virtual reality:
Virtual reality offers an immersive and interactive experience in a virtual environment, mainly used for simulation and modeling purpose in the oil and gas sector. Leveraging VR technology, oil & gas operators can interpret and evaluate seismic data and generate visuals of earth’s subsurface, while exploring new oil fields. In addition, VR based systems can replace traditional planning and design techniques and enhance the understanding of facilities through visualization techniques. Another emerging use case that leverage VR technology is the increasing digital twins adoption in the oil & gas sector. A digital twin is a digital replica of operational plant assets which also enables interaction between the virtual and physical worlds dynamically. By utilizing data collected from sensors installed at plant sites and various equipments, it can be used to optimize various processes and also make adjustments to facility designs. Along with providing reliable connectivity, high-performance 5G network also allows higher flexibility in implementation these innovative VR use cases.
Conclusion & future outlook:
The oil and gas industry is amongst the most complex industries which deal with stringent guidelines regarding safety, health, and environment. Industry operators are continuously striving to accomplish better ways to comply with the norms imposed by different regulators, while meeting the increasing global energy demands. Operators have embarked several digital transformation initiatives by holistic application of several technologies like embedding of sensor, storage, compute, advanced artificial intelligence, and machine learning among other. With technological advancements like MEC, intelligence will move towards the edge of various endpoint devices installed in oil & gas companies. All these technological advancements are providing opportunity for oil & gas industries to transform their communication network and application systems by leveraging the 5G network capabilities – enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra reliability and low latency communication (URLLC), massive machine type communication (mMTC).
