SatComs in Oil & Gas E&P: The Broadband Connection in Emergent Exploration and Mature Production
by Martin Jarrold
London, March 5, 2012--Oil & Gas Communications Brazil 2012: ‘21st Century Digital Oilfield & Gasfield Imperatives Onshore, Offshore, and in Deepwater’ (O&GC Brazil 2012) brings the GVF & EMP Oil & Gas Communications Series to its 14th international event on 25th & 26th April in Rio de Janeiro. Just three weeks later the 15th conference in the Series, Oil & Gas Communications Europe 2012: ‘Digital Applications & Communications Dynamicsin the Mature & Emergent Northern Fields’ (O&GCE5),takes place in Aberdeen, over 16th & 17th May.
Series conference # 15 will certainly be a major milestone in the development of the GVF conference-related focus on this key end-user vertical market, and the Series continues to go from strength-to-strength, not only through the continuing support from both the communications solution provider community and the end-user sector, but also through its expansion into new geographies in the global oil and gas patch.
The 2012 Rio de Janeiro event will only be the second dedicated to satellite communications in Brazil’s exploration and production (E&P) environment, whereas the Aberdeen conference will be the fifth to focus on Europe’s oil and gas fields. But, even within this longer-standing European focus the geographical emphasis has shifted from the North Sea only to incorporate the hydrocarbon potential of the Arctic latitudes.
Why Rio?
The largest oil-production region in Brazil is, in fact, within the boundaries of Rio de Janeiro state. It contains about 80 percent of the country’s total production, with most crude production being offshore in very deep water and consisting of mostly heavier grades of crude. Additionally a large proportion of Brazil's natural gas production occurs from offshore fields in the Campos Basin in Rio de Janeiro state, with a significant volume of onshore production occurs in Amazonas and Bahia states.
Discoveries in Brazil's offshore subsalt have the potential to significantly increase oil production in the country, as well as to boost Brazil's total natural gas reserves by 50 percent, and it has been estimated that spending on investments in further oil and natural gas exploration and production in Brazil could exceed US$75 billion by the end of this year.
Exploration and production (E&P) projects in the Tupi Field in Santos Basin are forecast to yield up to 8 billion barrels of recoverable reserves (oil and natural gas volumes combined), but are located in a subsalt zone that is an average of 5.5km below the surface of the ocean. Numerous other subsalt discoveries have resulted in analyst estimates of some 56 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
The difficulty of access to these reserves, resulting from both the large depths and the pressures involved with subsalt oil production, mean that there are many technical hurdles that must be overcome, requiring major new infrastructure and associated communications networking capabilities.
Such key current – and other – emerging issues on the regional E&P communications and applications networking agenda will be prioritized at O&GC Brazil 2012 together with other topic areas arising from the international energy environment and the wider global economy which, respectively feature a high oil price and persistent stagnation.
Following this continuing rationale for a Brazil-oriented oil & gas communications event – which will build on the successes of the first Rio de Janeiro conference in 2011 – O&GC Brazil 2012 will deliver an information and communications technology (ICT) oriented dialogue at the crucial interface of an elevated demand for solutions by the energy vertical and the supply of those solutions from the communications industry.
The Rio de Janeiro list of applications and connectivity imperatives to be discussed will include ICT aspects of: safety systems provision on oil & gas installations at sea; and, the implications for E&P ICT in the Brazilian region of the oil & gas patch arising from deep-water drilling moratoria in other hydrocarbon extraction ocean regions. Other key theme additions will include the enhanced application of satellite-based security provisions related to the use of “Cloud”-based data traffic networking.
Over two days of discussion, and in addition to the above themes, O&GC Brazil 2012 will examine the full range of satellite-based communications, and integrated satellite-terrestrial hybrid communications solutions, to which the oil & gas industry turns to play a vital role in providing the essential connectivity and access to vital applications. Mission critical operational success in the upstream E&P environment is dependent on access to the most efficient ICTs, and to the wealth of sophisticated applications these technologies bring to the disposal of the teams of geologists, geophysicists, drilling engineers, seismic data analysts, etc., etc., who locate new oil & gas reserves and get them out of the ground and from beneath the ocean floor through the collection of massive amounts of disparate data in multiple formats (including GPS, acoustic, compass and other sensor data) and using the information for predictive analysis. Widely spread and remotely located experts can see data as it is collected in real time and can determine the size and potential value of a payload before any actual drilling begins, a capability that can significantly reduce the amount of time and other resources wasted on drilling sites that don't have a strong yield potential. In Brazil exploration for new hydrocarbon reserves has moved increasingly to dangerous, difficult (and otherwise very expensive) environments, where the extreme physical conditions of a hostile climate and multiple geographic/topographic obstacles are as equally challenging as the investment imperatives that must be faced in the remote deployment of drilling equipment.
OK, so why is Aberdeen still important?
The 2012 Aberdeen conference again takes a leap into new hydrocarbon geographies and the latest communications technologies.
The program for this latest event dedicated to the European “oil & gas patch” – which will examine the role of satellite, and satellite-wireless, technologies and services in continuing to bring mission critical operational success to the maturing oil & gas fields of the North Sea – will push into a deeper exploration of the communications imperatives and the delivery of networking solutions for the extreme northerly boundary of Europe’s new hydrocarbon exploration & production (E&P) opportunity.
The Arctic Nations of Europe – Denmark, Norway and Russia – have staked their claims to the ocean floor hydrocarbon resource potential of the Arctic Basin rock strata. As global climate change warms the environment of the Arctic latitudes, opening-up the North-Western and North-Eastern Passages to year-round maritime navigation – allowing the positioning of semi-submersible and floating drilling platforms – the satellite and wireless communications industry must begin to gear-up for, and to respond to, this new business opportunity. So, the first and biggest questions become: How should the communication sector go about this? What lessons can be learned from the communications solutions developed during the evolution of North Sea offshore E&P? How can these lessons be applied, albeit using more modern and sophisticated technology platforms, in the context of the even more geographically challenging physical environment of the Arctic?
However, North Sea reserves of oil & gas, though continuing to mature, are not yet exhausted, and cutting-edge information and communications technology (ICT) solutions remain of the highest importance in their further exploitation. Use of the very latest extraction technologies, supported by the latest communications and networking solutions means that North Sea oil & gas supplies are still of economic interest, still a financially viable resource.
No one would deny that mission critical operational success in the oil & gas E&P environment has been dependent on access to the most efficient information and communications technologies (ICTs), and to the wealth of sophisticated applications these technologies facilitate, as noted above.
However, this is a role which, though well developed, still has potential to evolve and expand. Therefore, O&GCE5 will explore this future evolution and expansion, not only with reference to the later stages of North Sea E&P, but with reference to the emergence of the fresh energy-yielding potential of the high northern latitudes.
This conference program will also include examination of the interface between Cloud Computing and Satellite Communications. The move from client server to cloud is an ICT paradigm shift requiring detailed attention by the satellite solutions provider community. As over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable, and virtualized, resources, in the form of web-based tools and applications offers-up important implications for the communications solution provider, it also does so for such end-users of ‘The Cloud’ as the oil & gas industry.
Additionally, the program will include an exploration of the role of the newest maritime stabilized and auto-deploy VSAT systems, a role increasingly relevant in ever-more geographically remote and environmentally extreme locations, as well as a high profile analysis of the contribution to E&P satcoms of Ka-band satellite technology.
To these ends, the Conference will bring together key leaders and experts from the oil & gas sector as well as the communications and commercial applications sectors, creating a high-level discussion forum, and providing extended networking opportunities for demand (end-user) and supply (vendor) expert practitioners. This networking dialog will be set against the backdrop of a conference program in which the nature of the applications and communications imperatives of the dynamic 21st Century energy market vertical will be fully addressed through a series of themed Interactive Sessions, Case Studies and Technology Showcase Presentations.
Further program information for both events can be located at www.uk-emp.co.uk and from links on the GVF website at www.gvf.org.
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Martin Jarrold is Director of International Programs of the GVF. He can be reached at martin.jarrold@gvf.org
