Australia plays a key role in deep sea gas and oil exploration, and in particular on the north-west shelf of the West Australian coast, where more than a dozen companies are involved. The industry there is of international significance, with state-of-the-art ICT developments being included in the day-to-day operations of these companies. Similar developments are taking place on shore, where remote mining sites are expanding their ICT activities, such as M2M. This means that they require more and more reliable, communications infrastructure to underpin these activities. In particular, for reliability purposes fibre infrastructure is rapidly replacing microwave and other wireless infrastructure technologies.
Furthermore, new large-scale submarine fibre optic networks are being considered to connect the various platforms with existing and new land-based fibre networks.
The high costs involved in these explorations and mining operations makes automation one of the key tools to manage these businesses. A large oil platform can cost well over $100 million, but even the much smaller un-manned deep sea recovery sites will cost $10m to $20m per site.
The industry has been at the forefront of automation innovation for several decades already. One of the latest developments is the integration of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication.
These new communication technologies are also playing a key role in ‘down-hole completion’ in deep sea projects. This involves undersea operations 100 metres and more below sea level, whereby the whole operation takes place under water – no platform on the surface. New technologies allow for the remote undersea separation of oil and gas from C02, water and other contaminants. This means that no large platforms are needed. Obviously this can’t be done in every situation, but it is an area with tremendous growth opportunities. However all of this creates the necessity for more instruments in the well, in order to accurately control what happens and to achieve the result of ‘intelligent well completion’.
These sites are managed remotely and communications technologies are of critical importance. Also 100% reliability is of the essence. So-called fibre ‘umbilicals’ are included in the ‘down hole’ and on the seafloor for both operational activities such as Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) and managing and monitoring the operations. Fibre cables are providing the capacity, latency and reliability for such operations.
ROVs are playing an increased role in deep sea field exploration. Data gathering and real-time data analytics are becoming ever more important; all operated via fibre optic cables and monitored in real time from offices that are remote from the exploration sites – could be Perth, London or New York. The increased use of data – for data analytic purposes to manage the business – is a key driver of the need of more bandwidth.
In general, however, on manned above-sea platforms also, new developments in ICT are requiring more and better means of communication. The move here is to create virtual control rooms with high-speed connections to the onshore control rooms of the organisations.
It is not just new sites that are profiting from the latest state-of-the-art developments. The maintenance, and in the end the removal, of the platforms are again multi-million dollar operations. Ongoing developments are aimed at lowering the costs and increasing the efficiency of the operations. Obviously ICT plays a key role in all of this and its role in exploration is only going to increase. As mentioned, reliability is key in the exploration business – a day lost in operation can cost $1 million; quality in all aspects of the business is therefore an essential element in all parts of the operation.
Older platforms have their own challenges. It is often a matter of communication upgrades, sometimes to replace satellite or microwave connections. The reliance on technology has made it necessary to increase communication capacity, its robustness and reliably, lower the latency, and in general ensure a cost effective outcome, fibre is increasingly seen as the best solutions. All of the older infrastructure on the platforms in Qatar is currently being replaced by fibre networks for exactly those reasons.
But as well as this more mundane activities such as the availability of internet and broadband services for work, safety, care and entertainment of the staff requires an ongoing upgrade of communications facilities, and again fibre networks are the way forward.
A totally different development is taking place in the North Sea, where high voltage DC wind farms are providing electricity to the oil and gas platforms, all linked by fibre optic infrastructure.
Paul Budde
See also: Australia – Telecoms – International Networks
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