Schlumberger – Wireless and WiMAX communications in North American oilfields
Feature Articles, Feb  24  2009 (Digital Energy Journal)

Through an exclusive agreement with ERF Wireless, Schlumberger is offering 1.5Mbps wireless data communications for oilfields in North America, which will eventually be available for entire basins.

Schlumberger has made an agreement with ERF Wireless to be an exclusive reseller of its wireless data communication services for the oil and gas industry in North America.

This means that it will be offering the oil and gas industry 1.5Mbps data communications using Wireless and WiMAX, in North American oilfields, thus, enabling real-time data collaboration between remote and field operations. Oil operators are aspiring to improve safety, environmental performances and production while reducing costs. Mindsets are therefore changing from a conventional operations mode to that of real-time operations to support those expectations. This requires a complex combination of people, processes, and technology to remotely monitor and analyze drilling data, update models in real time, collaborate among teams, and provide expert consulting.

ERF Wireless already claims to have the largest wireless communications network covering North American oil and gas operations, and the service is growing quickly, so it may soon cover entire basins.

The data communications is non-contended, which means that every single individual site is guaranteed to get the full 1.5Mbps; there is also no limitation on the amount of data that can be transferred. This is something you do not normally get when using a wireless communications service in an airport, or from your home or office internet service.

It is also fully encrypted, so there is no way that anyone unauthorised can change or read the data. ERF Wireless has set up similar wireless communications for banks, and so has expertise with wireless data security.
Many oilfields are located far away from cellular phone networks, and can only send high bandwidth data by using satellite communications or microwave, which are expensive, and also suffer from high latency (a delay due to the time to send the data to the satellite and back). This latency can interrupt the fluency of voice communications and make machine to machine communications very complex and unreliable.

With this wireless data communications service, Schlumberger is able to help people communicate in ways they were not able to do before, like enabling drilling operations to send data back to the office for collaboration in real time.
“ I believe it’s relatively affordable for any client,” says Deryl Rice, business manager for global connectivity services in North America for Schlumberger. “Personnel stationed at the wellsite still have to routinely travel offsite to locations that offer more reliable connectivity to upload operational data for review by centralized experts. This new service allows experts at the wellsite and other locations to collaborate effectively during operations and not have to be restricted to periods between operations”.

The network is being expanded rapidly, in areas where there is a large amount of oil and gas activity and demand for the service.

“ If a customer wants to go out to the Rockies somewhere [not already covered by the service] we can go there and set up a network for them within a relatively short time frame,” says Mr. Rice.

There are a number of government grants available to support the roll-out of wireless communications in local communities, which the industry might be able to take advantage of, Mr Rice says.

The service is so reliable and secure that it might ultimately be used for sending remote commands to automation equipment, although there are no plans for anyone to do this so far, Mr Rice says. “The industry is pushing us for using it to run equipment remotely and this new service certainly paves the way for that to happen in the not too distant future.”

Service
The service is specifically designed to meet the Oil and Gas industries environmental, operational and safety requirements in the land-based oilfield. Schlumberger carried out an extensive collaborative study that spanned its technology segments to ensure that the quality of communications and associated Service Level Agreements meet the needs of the modern oilfield.
” Whilst there are a large number of national service providers that offer commercial grade communications, we found that oilfield operations require a far superior level of service,” says Mr. Rice.

ERF Wireless will undertake the work of installing wireless data communications in the region and connecting it to the internet or through to private corporate networks. ERF has a dedicated oil and gas services subsidiary.

The service uses a range of data protocols, including Wi-Fi and WiMAX, which transports the data of entire networks from the wellsite to the office. The maximum distance of an operational site from a wireless communications base-station can be up to 20km, says Mr Rice.

The ‘backhaul’ (communications between the wireless data terminal in the field and the international communications network) can be made by fibre optic cable, or a variety of other means.

Using the service
There are plenty of ways people and companies might benefit from the service.

For example, having reliable, fast data communications is an important component of all aspects of the ‘digital oilfield’ and one which has often been missing or underestimated to date. Meeting AFE (Authorization For Expenditure) commitments, streamlining productivity to reduce the completion times and reducing NPT (Non Production Time) is a common goal for all oilfield operations.

With a service like this, a range of data could be sent back to the office and engineers could monitor it from there. For example, they could see live video feeds of site operations, and get log data, automation data, and data from sensors in real-time.

They can use the system to communicate with all types of mobile equipment, including trucks and barges. There might be benefits of using it for communications during seismic surveys.

The service could be used to support telephone calls, legacy fax systems and videoconferencing, including Voice over IP, for both personal and business communications.