The changing world of satellite communications

As with many other industries, the world of communications in supporting the oil and gas industry is developing rapidly, both in terms of the users' needs and the technologies capable of meeting the sector's constantly evolving demands.
 
With near-shore exploration in areas such as the North Sea, the requirements are broadly in line with those of most data-intensive industries.
 
As fibre links can be placed alongside pipelines linking oil or gas rigs with the mainland, terrestrial solutions form the primary underlying communications technology, with satellite and microwave used as a back-up as required.
 

Ku-band-based solutions
 
The market took a quantum leap forward with the emergence of Inmarsat-type satellite technologies and has moved on again with the latest Ku-band-based solutions offering a faster, fixed price broadband service.
 
Critically, for both the vessel owner and individual crew member, the expansion of Ku-band brings voice and data performance much closer to the established ADSL communications quality users are used to back home on land. And, as Ku-band delivery becomes faster, cheaper and more readily available in remoter corners of the globe, so associated usage will increase.
 
Upload capacity
 
One area in which the exploration industry is unlike many other sectors is in the flow of data. In most IT applications, more data travels from the centre to outlying locations, such as regional offices or manufacturing units.
 
However, in the oil and gas industry, large volumes of raw geological and SCADA (supervisory and data acquisition) type data is transmitted from rigs and exploration vessels to each company's data centre. Equally, relatively little data flows back from the centre and when it does, it usually relates to confirming precise details as to where to focus local exploration efforts based on an analysis of that data.
 
Unlike most satellite-based solutions which are data centre-centric therefore, here most of the required bandwidth is at each of the remote locations.
 
A standard enterprise-grade service focused on the data centre will be unsuitable in such an environment: what is required is a solution which can offer a Quality of Service (QoS) with large upload capacity.
 
As a result, the typical satellite-based solution deployed by oil and gas companies today is a single carrier per channel (SCPC) solution - in effect, a 'leased line in the sky'.

 
Optimising bandwidth
 
Oil and gas companies are not immune from the intense financial pressure which continue to result from the current economic downturn and so need to make the most of the bandwidth available to them.
 
Most companies today typically have a dedicated communications link to each rig or ship. This is where the potential exists to optimise bandwidth performance by sharing connectivity between multiple remote sites and the data centre.
 
So, if each individual rig, for example, uses 2Mbps of connectivity five times per day, it may be possible to share that bandwidth between, say 10 rigs, so requiring a substantially lower investment. The big issue for any exploration company is that of bandwidth cost, so by moving away from a dedicated to a shared resource, provides the opportunity to make much better use of existing bandwidth.
 
For many, the move away from a bottom-up, per-rig to a top-down, fleet-based approach may require a fundamental change of mindset: however, the potential savings in sharing in-route communications are substantial.
 
Though the initial cost of a shared solution will be slightly higher compared to a SCPC solution, the medium to long-term savings on bandwidth will far outweigh any additional initial upfront investment.
 
There is another change which companies should consider when selecting the most appropriate and cost-effective satellite-based solution. Historically, in an industry with unique demands on data communications, not surprisingly, sector-specific solutions have had inherent advantages over generic, off-the-shelf competitors capable of limited personalisation at best to meet the needs of an individual end-user.
 
However, with the level of investment in such broader solutions far outpacing that of their niche counterparts in making these more stable and cost-efficient, it is fair to say that in some cases the generic solution will now outperform custom build products. As a result, for those oil and gas companies that have in the past selected specially developed communications solutions, now may be the time to take a fresh look at what the market has to offer.
 
And of course, in such a mission-critical area in which the data is the business, it is equally essential to have total confidence in the financial robustness and quality of support of any provider claiming to offer a truly global communications network.