Facing the threat

For various reasons outlined in Part One of the Oil & Gas Middle East security report threats are not uniform, are unpredictable, and the weight of responsibility in securing those facilities and ensuring the safety of its employees falls with the operating company.

At a recent Honeywell users group meeting in Pheonix, Arizona security specialist Jon Harmon, global director for critical infrastructure protection, Honeywell Process Solutions, praised the companies operating in the Middle East and North Africa for taking a measured and structured approach to plant security, and said the region is a front-runner in adopting new and innovative security measures.

“Throughout the Middle East and Africa security investment is taken very seriously and sophisticated systems are viewed as a basic requirement, and are factored in to the design, construction and implementation phases of the project right from the off.”

The vigilance required by processing plants needs to be higher because those people who may target a plant need only get lucky once.

The level of security varies from region to region, but with more expensive and increasingly mobile equipment being installed, theft is a growing problem worldwide.

“Perimeter security is one aspect of controlling the movement of assets in and out of the plant, but threats aren’t always external. People within the plant environment can be responsible or involved with things going missing, so more advanced tracking of assets, be they workers or items of equipment can be tracked in a much more advanced way now,” says Harmon.

Honeywell’s Instant Location Solution (HILS) is designed for industrial applications and harnesses identification and location technologies to locate people and track mobile assets in real time.

“The position of an asset as a new data type can be used to reinforce safety practices, improve security, analyse asset utilization and improve operational and maintenance workflow optimisation – sometimes its just a case of the goods being put in the wrong place or going missing within the plant. This can have a detrimental effect on keeping to schedules and using staff efficiently as people are deployed to look for the misplaced goods.”

The HILS system will integrates four advanced positioning technologies, Global Positioning System (GPS), Ultra-Wide-Band (UWB), Wi-Fi and active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and is capable of performing in harsh outdoor environments.

“However, the challenge with security is that often the things that you can anticipate and defend yourself against accordingly, is the easy stuff, and the oil and gas industry poses some pretty unique challenges.”

Offshore platforms, tankers and land based installations all have perimeters that represent significant challenges to perimeter monitoring, and competing technologies vying for a slice of the security business often muddy the picture further.

Beyond the now well-established access control technologies, CCTV and RFID tracking equipment, new and exciting developments are being deployed to meet the needs of the industry.

“A pipeline is a unique challenge for example. There are detection methods, such as fibre optics that run through the pipe, reporting on pressure changes, but we are detecting a lot of interest in deterrent methods, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, which a lot of our clients are looking at, and is an area we are developing. These can monitor the pipelines over a large area and report back in real-time,” says Harmon.

Deterrent plays a key role and is a key component of the integrated security solutions currently being rolled-out.

“Ultimately the level of deterrence required for has to be sufficient and secure enough to discourage somebody targeting your facility. This can take many forms, but better protected facilities pose a much greater challenge to an aggressor,” says Harmon.

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