Two very different cities will, over the next few months, host conferences in the GVF Oil & Gas Communications Series. Neither of these cities is the political capital if its respective nation, but each is a globally important center in the exploitation of hydrocarbon energy resources.
The first is Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s major center of manufacturing production and service sector industries, including the high-growth telecommunications sector as well as the oil & gas industry. The latter renders the city as an obvious choice of location for a Latin American dialog between the providers of communications networking solutions and the users of such solutions in the exploration and production (E&P) of hydrocarbon-based energy supplies.
The second is Aberdeen, a city within a region associated with fly-fishing, golf and whisky, but for the last several decades more strongly linked with exploitation of the North Sea’s reserves of oil & gas, which, though continuing to mature, are not yet exhausted, and where cutting-edge information and communications technology (ICT) solutions remain of the highest importance in their further production. In this part of the oil & gas patch it is the use of the very latest extraction technologies, vitally supported by the latest communications and networking solutions, that mean North Sea oil & gas supplies are still of considerable economic interest, still a financially viable, as well as an essential energy, resource.
Oil & Gas Communications Brazil 2011: Digital Oilfield & Gasfield Imperatives Onshore, Offshore, and in Deepwater (O&GC Brazil 2011) brings the GVF & EMP Oil & Gas Communications Series to its 11th event and the first annual conference in the Series to address communications networking imperatives of Brazil’s oil & gas patch.
The largest oil-production region in Brazil is Rio de Janeiro state, containing 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. A large proportion of Brazil's natural gas production occurs from offshore fields in the Campos Basin in Rio de Janeiro state, and 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 amount to US$72 billion by as soon as 2012.
Such E&P projects as the Tupi Field in Santos Basin are forecast to yield 5-8 billion barrels of recoverable reserves (oil and natural gas volumes combined), but are located in a subsalt zone averaging 18,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. Numerous other subsalt discoveries have resulted in analyst estimates of some 56 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
Difficulties in accessing these reserves, resulting from both the large depths and pressures involved mean that there are many technical hurdles that must be overcome, requiring major new infrastructure and associated communications networking capabilities.
There is, therefore, a clear rationale for a Brazil-oriented oil & gas communications event, one which will deliver 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 the continuing impact of the only quite recently suspended 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.
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. As noted above, 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.
The Rio de Janeiro conference will take place 19th & 20th April, to be followed on 17th & 18th May by the Aberdeen event, the Oil & Gas Communications Europe Conference (O&GCE4) which, for the second year, will take its Digital Applications & Communications Dynamics focus beyond the territory of the mature hydrocarbon-bearing sectors of the North Sea, into the far northern latitudes of the Arctic Ocean region.
As in Brazil, the conference program will examine the role of satellite, and satellite-wireless, technologies and services in bringing extended mission critical operational success to deepwater oil & gas fields. But, beyond the E&P challenges for which the North Sea has been well-known for decades the European-focused conference will additionally explore the communications imperatives and the delivery of networking solutions for the extreme northerly boundaries of Europe’s new hydrocarbon E&P opportunity, an opportunity which presents a new set of unique and challenging geographical and climate conditions.
The Arctic Nations of Europe – Denmark, Norway and Russia – have already begun to lay claim to the ocean floor hydrocarbon resource potential of the Arctic Basin rock strata. As global climate change warms the environment of the Arctic latitudes, and as the Arctic Ocean is progressively opening-up to year-round maritime navigation – thus including 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 question becomes, how should the communication sector go about this?
For parts of the globe with more recently discovered offshore reserves of oil & gas, or with offshore reserves at much earlier stages of full commercial exploitation (such as Brazil), many of the lessons learned from, and communications solutions developed during, the evolution of North Sea offshore E&P have become applicable, albeit using more modern and sophisticated technology platforms, sometimes within the context of even more geographically challenging physical environments
But, the continuing growth in the long-term global thirst for supplies of hydrocarbon-based energy, even despite climate change-related pressures to increase the use of renewable energy sources, means that the most profound E&P challenges of the Arctic must also be faced and tackled.
Thus, two more important, and closely related, questions arise. Firstly, how is the latest generation of cutting-edge communications solutions and digital oilfield/gasfield applications – with their genesis in the hostile offshore environment of the North Sea, and now with their current and continuing development taking place in the context of offshore E&P in South East Asia, and West Africa, as well as Brazil – now being re-applied to the context of the depleting reserves of the North Sea? And secondly, how might the ICT-related lessons of this North Sea-to-currently-emergent energy regions history now be applied to the totally new prospects offered by an increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean?
Satellite, satellite-wireless hybrid, and wireless platforms, have made, and continue to make, a vital contribution to this ICT access, providing essential connectivity to vital applications in a range of challenging geographic environments. However, this is a role which, though well developed, still has potential to evolve and expand. Therefore, O&GCE4 will continue the Conference Series exploration of 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.
Both the Rio and Aberdeen conferences will bring together key leaders and experts from the oil & gas sector as well as the communications and commercial applications sectors, creating in each case a high-level discussion form, and providing an extended networking opportunity for demand (end-user) and supply (vendor) expert practitioners. These networking dialogs will be set against the backdrop of conference content which fully investigates the nature of the applications and communications imperatives of the dynamic 21st Century energy market vertical through a series of themed Interactive Sessions, Case Studies and Technology Showcase Presentations. The evolving programs for the two conferences may be viewed on the following web pages:
Rio de Janeiro – www.uk-emp.co.uk/11th.O&G.Brazil.2011/index_files/Page637.htm
Aberdeen – www.uk-emp.co.uk/4th.O&G.Europe.2011/index_files/Page637.htm
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Martin Jarrold is Chief of International Program Development, GVF. He can be reached at martin.jarrold@gvf.org
