SCADA
Remote Alarm Notification Helps Fuel Increased Gas Production
Accurate, real-time data is essential to succeeding in the oil and gas industry. Engineers need operational data from the field to calibrate equipment, schedule maintenance activities and coordinate with third-party logistics, to keep the flow of product moving.
TSA Updates Cybersecurity Requirements for Pipeline Owners, Operators
(P&GJ) — The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced an update to its Security Directive regarding oil and natural gas pipeline cybersecurity. This revised directive will continue the effort to reinforce cybersecurity preparedness and resilience for the nation's critical pipelines.
Control Rooms: Achieving SCADA Operational Readiness, Compliance
(P&GJ) — Implementing a comprehensive control room management (CRM) plan in today’s energy market can be a challenging task in that integrating it with modern supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems adds layers of complexity to the project’s implementation and compliance requirements.
EPIC Midstream Pioneers with Industry Leading ESG Standards for Pipeline Monitoring
EPIC’s cutting edge environmental and safety protections are possible through using fiber optics to monitor over 1,600 miles of its crude and NGL pipelines.
Using RTUs in Monitoring Pipelines in Extreme Conditions
In remote locations, communications may be slow, intermittent or unreliable. The RTU is the device at the edge – sitting between the control room and the field instruments – that provides a low-latency response to changing site conditions and performs data filtering.
Control Room Allegory: Reality, Road Trip, Relationships
In the “allegory of the cave” by Plato, people have been imprisoned inside a cave for their entire lives, tied and bound so they can only see the stone wall in front of them. Behind them is a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, which contains objects. Puppeteers manipulate the objects, cast shadows on the wall, and also make noises.
Control Centers at the Heart of Innovation, Advancement
Just as technology advances helped drive U.S. oil and gas producers to new heights, operators of the energy highways – the pipelines and their sophisticated control centers – are increasingly harnessing innovation to gain efficiency.
Embedding Operating Procedures in Pipeline SCADA
The pipeline supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) operator has one of the most critical jobs in the pipeline industry and should be given all the help available to keep pipelines safe and liquid flowing. To this end, more than 25 years ago, a major oil company determined that SCADA-embedded operating procedures and safety features were needed to improve safety.
New Approach to SCADA for Modern Pipeline Operations
The oil and gas supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) market is expected to grow over the next five years because of increased demand for the remote management of pipelines and growing pipeline networks. The question is: What approach should your operation take when setting up your SCADA system?
Staying Secure While Migrating to the Digital Oil Field
Digitization allows for more accurate measurement and deeper visibility, but internet connectivity also means devices can be accessed remotely, and maliciously. This is cause for huge concern since attacks targeting the oil and gas industry or power grids are more than just about stealing data as they take on an actual physical manifestation.
SCADA Operations Controlled Remotely
Houston-based Remote Operations Center (ROC) connects operators to their data and provides an offsite monitoring workforce that can improve efficiency while reducing risk. It is the only third-party provider solely focused on executing control center services for liquid and gas pipeline operators.
Securing Open SCADA Systems for Pipeline Operations
Traditional SCADA systems used pipeline operational control are vulnerable in at least three main areas: operational information, production data and control logic. The more openly this data flows, the more cost-effectively the plant can be run, so there is much to be gained by securing the data exchange.
Expansion Proposed for Texas-Colorado NGL System
Enterprise Products Partners, Enbridge, Western Gas Partners and DCP Midstream have announced binding open seasons to expand capacity on a 1,018-mile system, which includes the Front Range and Texas Express pipelines and transports mixed NGLs from the DJ Basin in Weld County, Colo. to Enterprise's NGL fractionation and storage complex in Mont Belvieu, Texas.
Importance of Management of Change in Alarm Modifications
For process plants and gas pipeline networks, it is essential to manage change when making modifications to alarms and alarm systems. Management of change (MoC) should, therefore, be a fundamental process within the alarm management lifecycle. It is widely recognized throughout the process industri..
Mobile Inspection Forms Cut Time, Maximize Accuracy of Audits
Recordkeeping increasingly is the linchpin for the safe, reliable construction and operation of energy pipeline systems. In both the aftermath of natural gas pipeline incidents and in the attempts to develop a more sophisticated safety culture that employs technology advances to expand preventive ma..
Top 10 Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities for Oil and Gas
With the exploitation of new cost-effective operational concepts, use of digital technologies and increased dependence on cyber structures, the oil and gas industry is exposed to new sets of vulnerabilities and threats. Cyberattacks have grown in stature and sophistication, making them more difficul..
Does Aligning Cybersecurity, Process Safety Approaches Reduce Risk?
Cyber-attacks are more hostile and frequent than ever. We’ve all heard news stories about how intellectual property and private information have been stolen by hackers. When this happens, it can be costly in some cases and embarrassing in others. However, for industrial operations, the stakes are mu..
AP Investigation: US Power Grid Vulnerable to Foreign Hacks
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Security researcher Brian Wallace was on the trail of hackers who had snatched a California university's housing files when he stumbled into a larger nightmare: Cyber-attackers had opened a pathway into the networks running the United States power grid.
Retrofitting Customized Valves, Actuators for Pipeline Monitoring Stations
Oil and gas engineers face a major problem in accurately and reliably measuring and monitoring the various fluids that are introduced into oil pipelines from well site pumping stations. A thorough understanding of both the oil separation process and the properties of valves and actuators is required to correctly specify a system that will sufficiently measure and monitor these various types of fluids. Also, the conditions downstream from each well are different, requiring valves and actuators to be highly customized to their specific role in the process.
GPR, EM Technologies Offer Rewards in Environmental Assessments
Geophysical surveys can be the bedrock – pardon the pun – of environmental projects, from locating abandoned underground storage tanks (USTs) and utilities, to complex mapping of geology in remedial investigations and finding landfill boundaries and other buried unknown problems.
Appalachian Midstream Operators Face Myriad of Challenges
This has been a busy year of new challenges and issues facing the Appalachian oil and gas industry as rig count in the Appalachian Basin and elsewhere is down substantially compared to the previous two years. A significant challenge ahead for shale developers in a lower price environment is to continue to be active in finding land, drilling wells and getting the natural resource to market. This article concerns our most recent report, published in May, on the issues and challenges facing midstream operators in the Appalachian Basin.
ROSEN Rolls Out Mobile Pipeline Diagnostics Units
ROSEN rolled out its much-anticipated R3 Service – which stands for responsive, rapid and reliable – before a large gathering of inquisitive industry executives and operators Oct. 28 in Houston. At the center of the new service is a fleet of high-end mobile diagnostics units capable of carrying all the diagnostic equipment necessary to sites throughout the United States.
ILI Offers Technology that Will Continue to Advance
There are about 3.5 million kilometers of oil and gas pipelines worldwide needing regular cleaning, inspection and maintenance, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA).
New Integrity Solutions Facing Many Same Old Problems
The protection of oil, gas and refined product pipelines against natural events such as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis, not to mention human actions including construction excavations, illegal tapping and terrorist sabotage, is an ongoing concern for operators around the world. However, in the United States, the top three causes of pipeline failure reported by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) are construction excavations, corrosion and equipment failure (Figure1).
Mastering Inspection of Challenging Pipelines
Pipelines are a valuable asset and need protection. In order to achieve this, a modern pipeline integrity management program usually includes regular inspections followed by integrity assessment, and if required, repair and rehabilitation measures.
Control Room Management Best Practices
The oil and gas industry is constantly changing, no more so than over the past several years with new technology, new production hot beds and new developing markets to deliver product to. These changes have set the stage for new opportunities and challenges for the midstream industry, particularly when it comes to the pressure of transporting commodities from the production fields to market. Pressure to do it faster but also safer.
Strategy Report Points to Improved Safety, Smart Pigs
With liquids pipeline incidents down by half since 1999, even as their use to transport crude oil pipeline has increased, there is little doubt among experts about what has led to this success on the safety front – preventive maintenance and integrity management programs.
Beyond Compliance: Reducing Major Incidents, Creating Business Value
In the five years since the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, operators have undergone progressively tighter regulatory restrictions in both offshore and onshore environments. Along with restructuring the Department of the Interior to include the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), more than seventeen reforms have been implemented since the 2010 accident, targeting everything from well-design to maintenance reviews to safety culture.
Buzz on Drones: Theyre Coming to the Energy Sector
Few trends have been bigger or more exciting to watch in the last decade than the rise of drones. From serious applications like warfare to more quirky ones like pizza delivery, the world is still clearly just starting to figure out how drones can profitably be used. That background makes the recent chatter about the opportunity for drone use in commercial oil and gas applications an extremely interesting trend to watch.
Survey: IT Experts Confident of Ability to Detect Critical Attacks
A new survey of over 400 energy executives and IT professionals in the energy, oil, gas and utility industries found that most energy security professionals were extremely confident in their ability to detect a cyber-attack on critical systems, with 86% stating they could detect a breach in less than one week.
- Keystone Oil Pipeline Resumes Operations After Temporary Shutdown
- U.S. House Passes Bill to Reverse Biden's LNG Pause
- Biden Administration Buys Oil for Emergency Reserve Above Target Price
- Enbridge to Invest $500 Million in Pipeline Assets, Including Expansion of 850-Mile Gray Oak Pipeline
- Williams Delays Louisiana Pipeline Project Amid Dispute with Competitor Energy Transfer
- Evacuation Technologies to Reduce Methane Releases During Pigging
- U.S. Regulators Approve Mexico Pacific LNG's Saguaro Connector Pipeline
- Editor’s Notebook: Nord Stream’s $20 Billion Question
- Enbridge Receives Approval to Begin Service on Louisiana Venice Gas Pipeline Project
- Russian LNG Unfazed By U.S. Sanctions
