Wireless instruments are not just better for maintenance and security, but also help users to reach deeper into more mature wells, argue industry veterans
From a slow start, there is emerging a tangible sense of progress in wireless technology in the oil and gas sector. Seemingly, more and more companies are now embracing the technology, which, if implemented correctly affords greater efficiency, profitability and safety.
In all process industries, the benefits afforded to a sector with wireless are many, notably maintenance, security and environmental performance.
In the oil and gas sector pump and steam trap monitoring for example, was time consuming and expensive, requiring physical inspection and gathering of large volumes of data from various plants and field-sites in remote locations. With wireless technology, operators can obtain equipment health information remotely.
In June, for the first time in the GCC, the M2M Technology Forum was held at the Le Royal Meridien, Abu Dhabi, which addressed the important concept of communications between devices, machines and bringing energy fields closer together.
With major players such as Emerson, Gazprom, Fiber Optic Association, Crescent Petroleum and Aggreko International and more, it demonstrates how seriously the industry is taking the wireless sector now. And perhaps more aware of the financial and other associated benefits.
So is the general sentiment that 2013 has been a good year for wireless instrumentation? “Confidently, we can say that it has,” said David Walker, Emerson Process Management, Sales Director, Wireless Solution, Middle East & Africa.
“This year we expanded our wireless portfolio to cover more and bigger applications that optimise operations and improve safety in oil and gas production. We introduced our Essential Asset Monitoring solutions, a pre-engineered, scalable, and integrated family of measurement and monitoring solutions for assets such as pumps, compressors, heat exchangers, cooling towers and more.
Previously, only a small percentage of these assets were monitored in real-time due to high capital and operating cost of wired equipment. Wireless technology removed this huge barrier.”
A few months ago, Emerson also started the production of wireless instruments in the UAE to better serve its customers in the Middle East and Africa. The localization of its wireless manufacturing points to the growing demand of wireless in the region and the fast expansion of its installed base.
Walker added that in the past 12 months, Emerson has won several projects in the region that involve a huge percentage of wireless that benefit day-to-day running.
“Moreover many of our customers have started to implement facility and enterprise-wide wireless applications, from traditional measurements like temperatures, level and flow, to vibration measurements on motors and gearboxes, and to sensing safety showers, eyewash stations, and related facilities.
We are also seeing a great deal of interest in business applications that improve safety, productivity and operations management. These include video monitoring for security and process monitoring, safety mustering to identify and record personnel at mustering stations, and location tracking to quickly find people and moveable assets.”
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Annabel Green, Product Line Director – Wireless Technology with Tendeka, endorses this view, and highlights a number of oil & gas products which the firm has delivered.
“2013 is the year when Tendeka extended wireless technology from downhole monitoring into the completions sector. The product range, which currently includes wireless downhole pressure and temperature monitoring has been extended to provide wireless intelligent completion solutions: including interval control valves and power generation to address the limitations of current battery technology.
The first of these devices are due to be installed during 2013, marking a major milestone in self-powering downhole wireless solutions for the completions market,” she said.
Tendeka has seen a steady uptake in the downhole wireless PT gauge in 2012 and during the first half of 2013; with a number of operators recognizing the benefits that this technology can deliver.
This has allowed us to start demonstrating performance and reliability for the completion products. It’s early days for wireless intelligent completions, but with progress sponsored by a major national oil company and growing industry interest, Tendeka are anticipating a steady but significant uptake.
Green adds the firm is pursuing a niche area of the upstream oil & gas sector.
“Focussing very much on the upstream, Tendeka are targeting specifically mature fields and inaccessible wellbores, such as multi-lateral bores. Over 70 per cent of total oil production today comes from mature fields, these fields are typified as having high water cut and large differential pressures between zones.
Tendeka’s wireless technology enables intelligent solutions to be retrofitted into the wells, providing data to aid production optimisation and increase recovery factors, and interval control to avoid deferred production while waiting for potentially risky intervention operations,” she says.
For new field developments, operators are increasing looking at multi-lateral technology to reduce well construction costs and increase reservoir contact, but while drilling technology has advanced to allow multiple well laterals to be drilled from a single bore, completion and monitoring technology has failed to keep pace allowing only passive devices to be placed within the laterals.
Wireless technology will allow monitoring with both branch and zonal control to be placed in each bore, finally delivering the functionality required for effective reservoir engineering.
Another firm has seen major advances in the range over which wireless instrument networks can operate which reduces the network investment costs, plus enhanced redundancy and topology options which assures higher operational availability.
Ian Ramsay-Connell, General Manager, Marketing Division, Yokogawa Middle East & Africa explained further.
“Yokogawa have a new concept to expand field wireless system to plant-wide wireless system based on ISA100.11a. Such systems ensure responses in real time by making dual redundant technologies and can be quite large in scale, supporting connections up to 20 Access points and 500 field wireless devices.
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Yokogawa field wireless devices are proved to communicate over distances up to 10km, which is 20 times the range of conventional systems.
Furthermore, Yokogawa encourage the use of Field Wireless systems in both monitoring and control application, because of its high reliable Radio, selectable fast update rate (0.5 Sec – 3600 Sec) and efficient power management. So, with Yokogawa Field Wireless Solution, customer can go further with over the air control, improve safety and simply work to secure future”
With wireless technology finally making an impact in the upstream sector, attention is already turning to what lies downstream, and how wireless can be incorporated in day-to-day operations.
“Wireless technology is being used in a wide variety of applications but the onus is towards upstream,” said Ramsay-Connell. “Downstream applications have great potential and require more exploitation in areas such as tank farms, congested structures in process plants and rotating plant.
Yokogawa is currently working on remote wellhead automation applications and mobile drilling facilities. These areas are anticipated to have major growth. Morever, Ramsay-Connell adds that the coverage of the ISA100 Use Cases has progressed such that Yokogawa are now applying wireless to closed loop control applications with fast update rates on real projects. This was hoped for but not expected.
Emerson is also working on downstream wireless solutions. “In the downstream sector, the implementation of industrial WiFi, or what we call a wireless plant network, is spreading in refineries and processing facilities worldwide,” said Walker.
“Some great examples are location tracking to improve personnel safety and asset monitoring, replacement of walkie-talkie radios with superior Voice Over IP handsets, transmission of video feeds and video analytics for workforce, safety, and emissions monitoring, and integration of multiple control systems using network bridges. The possibilities are endless. Until now, we continue to discover new applications to improve downstream business operations.”
The UAE-based Phoenix Contract has developed Trusted Wireless 2.0 – a wireless technology, especially for industrial use. It is suitable for the transmission of sensor/actuator information without a cable infrastructure or for the transmission of small or medium data amounts – even over large distances.
Looking forward, it would help, suggests Green, if the wireless technology term wasn’t used almost as a generic descriptive but more specifically. The term wireless is used very broadly to describe a range of chemical solutions and various types of telemetry with applications across different industry sectors.
This has led to preconceptions in the industry about the limitations of wireless technology for long-term service. Tendeka is working hard to address these but would welcome a dedicated industry group for this technology, she concludes.
