Cybersecurity: The Forever Problem

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (07) ◽  
pp. 26-29
Author(s):  
Blake Wright
Keyword(s):  
Homeland Security ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Oil Field ◽  
University Of Southern California ◽  
Department Of Homeland Security ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Technology Changes ◽  
The Us ◽  
The University

The oil and gas business has become as much about bytes as barrels in recent years. Artificial intelligence, the internet of things (IoT), big data, and the ongoing digitization of the industry have not only made it a more-efficient machine but also a target to unscrupulous sorts looking to confound, cash in, and move on. As more information comes forward regarding the May 2021 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, it appears to have been a cash grab with the knock-on effect of physically crippling the company’s flow of fuel to East Coast states. The outage was never the goal, but what it if had been? That question, or one similar, was part of what got the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) involved and the subsequent announcement of a Security Directive that will require critical-pipeline owners and operators to report confirmed and potential cybersecurity incidents to the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and to designate a cybersecurity coordinator, to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It will also require critical-pipeline owners and operators to review their current practices as well as to identify any gaps and related remediation measures to address cyber-related risks and report the results to the Transportation Security Administration and CISA within 30 days. The bad guys made off with over $4 million in the Colonial attack; however, the US Department of Justice was able to recover about $2.3 million in the cryptocurrency paid by the pipeline operator. But the Colonial breach wasn’t a first for the oil and gas industry, and it certainly won’t be the last. As more of the oil field comes online, it creates additional access points for would-be villains to pounce. What makes the cybersecurity threat unique compared to other obstacles in the industry is that it is likely unsolvable, only manageable. “This will likely be a forever problem,” said Donald Paul, research professor of engineering at the University of Southern California and former CTO at Chevron. “It’s not like you can do something and fix it all, because ultimately, as the technology changes, as you add more digital systems, more vulnerabilities show up, and then the bad guys figure out how to crack them. It’s an ongoing process.”

Identifying Key Safety Culture Factors for the Offshore Industry

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ning Lou ◽  
Ezra Wari ◽  
James Curry ◽  
Kevin McSweeney ◽  
Rick Curtis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Safety Culture ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Transportation Safety ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
The Us ◽  
Offshore Industry ◽  
Offshore Oil And Gas ◽  
Offshore Oil

This research identifies key factors, or safety culture categories, that can be used to help describe the safety culture for the offshore oil and gas industry and develop a comprehensive offshore safety culture assessment toolkit for use by the US Gulf of Mexico (GoM) owners and operators. Detailed questionnaires from selected safety culture frameworks of different industries were collected and analyzed to identify important safety culture factors and key questions for assessment. Safety frameworks from different associations were investigated, including the Center for Offshore Safety (COS), Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The safety culture factors of each of these frameworks were generalized and analyzed. The frequency of the safety culture factors in each framework was analyzed to explore commonality. The literature review and analysis identified a list of common factors among safety culture frameworks.

Study the effect of casting temperature on details from thermo-plastic materials

2020 ◽  
pp. 42-45
Author(s):  
J.A. Kerimov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Mold Temperature ◽  
Quality Parameters ◽  
Oil Field ◽  
Casting Temperature ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Field Equipment ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Impact

The implementation of plastic details in various constructions enables to reduce the prime cost and labor intensity of machine and device manufacturing, decrease the weight of design and improve their quality and reliability at the same time. The studies were carried out with the aim of labor productivity increase and substitution of colored and black metals with plastic masses. For this purpose, the details with certain characteristics were selected for further implementation of developed technological process in oil-gas industry. The paper investigates the impact of cylinder and compression mold temperature on the quality parameters (shrinkage and hardness) of plastic details in oil-field equipment. The accessible boundaries of quality indicators of the details operated in the equipment of exploration, drilling and exploitation of oil and gas industry are studied in a wide range of mode parameters. The mathematic dependences between quality parameters (shrinkage and hardness) of the details on casting temperature are specified.

SafeOCS Industry Safety Data Program: An Industrywide Safety Data Management Framework

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (12) ◽  
pp. 34-37
Author(s):  
Demetra V. Collia ◽  
Roland L. Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
High Reliability ◽  
Safety Data ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Near Miss ◽  
Outer Continental Shelf ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
The Us ◽  
Recommended Practices ◽  
Industry Associations

Introduction In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the oil and gas industry, regulators, and other stakeholders recognized the need for increased collaboration and data sharing to augment their ability to better identify safety risks and address them before an accident occurs. The SafeOCS program is one such collaboration between industry and government. It is a voluntary confidential reporting program that collects and analyzes data to advance safety in oil and gas operations on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). The US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) established the program with input from industry and then entered into an agreement with the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to develop, implement, and operate the program. As a principal statistical agency, BTS has considerable data-collection-and-analysis expertise with near-miss reporting systems for other industries and the statutory authority to protect the confidentiality of the reported information and the reporter’s identify. Source data submitted to BTS are not subject to subpoena, legal discovery, or Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Solving for the Gap Across industries, companies have long realized the benefits of collecting and analyzing data around safety and environmental events to identify risks and take actions to prevent reoccurrence. These activities are aided by industry associations that collect and share event information and develop recommended practices to improve performance. In high-reliability industries such as aviation and nuclear, it is common practice to report and share events among companies and for the regulators to identify hidden trends and create or update existing recommended practices, regulations, or other controls. The challenge for the offshore oil and gas industry is that industry associations and the regulator are typically limited to collecting data on agency-reportable incidents. With this limitation, other high-learning-value events or observed conditions could go unnoticed as a trend until a major event occurs. This lack of timely data represented an opportunity for the industry and the offshore regulator (BSEE) to collaborate on a means of gathering safety-event data that would allow for analysis and identification of trends, thereby enabling appropriate interventions to prevent major incidents and foster continuous improvement. The SafeOCS Industry Safety Data (ISD) program provides an effective process for capturing these trends by looking across a wider spectrum of events, including those with no consequences.

Digital Oil Field; The NPDC Experience

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Ijomanta ◽  
Lukman Lawal ◽  
Onyekachi Ike ◽  
Raymond Olugbade ◽  
Fanen Gbuku ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Oil Field ◽  
Battery Life ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Field Management ◽  
Digital Oilfield ◽  
Data Analytic

Abstract This paper presents an overview of the implementation of a Digital Oilfield (DOF) system for the real-time management of the Oredo field in OML 111. The Oredo field is predominantly a retrograde condensate field with a few relatively small oil reservoirs. The field operating philosophy involves the dual objective of maximizing condensate production and meeting the daily contractual gas quantities which requires wells to be controlled and routed such that the dual objectives are met. An Integrated Asset Model (IAM) (or an Integrated Production System Model) was built with the objective of providing a mathematical basis for meeting the field's objective. The IAM, combined with a Model Management and version control tool, a workflow orchestration and automation engine, A robust data-management module, an advanced visualization and collaboration environment and an analytics library and engine created the Oredo Digital Oil Field (DOF). The Digital Oilfield is a real-time digital representation of a field on a computer which replicates the behavior of the field. This virtual field gives the engineer all the information required to make quick, sound and rational field management decisions with models, workflows, and intelligently filtered data within a multi-disciplinary organization of diverse capabilities and engineering skill sets. The creation of the DOF involved 4 major steps; DATA GATHERING considered as the most critical in such engineering projects as it helps to set the limits of what the model can achieve and cut expectations. ENGINEERING MODEL REVIEW, UPDATE AND BENCHMARKING; Majorly involved engineering models review and update, real-time data historian deployment etc. SYSTEM PRECONFIGURATION AND DEPLOYMENT; Developed the DOF system architecture and the engineering workflow setup. POST DEPLOYMENT REVIEW AND UPDATE; Currently ongoing till date, this involves after action reviews, updates and resolution of challenges of the DOF, capability development by the operator and optimizing the system for improved performance. The DOF system in the Oredo field has made it possible to integrate, automate and streamline the execution of field management tasks and has significantly reduced the decision-making turnaround time. Operational and field management decisions can now be made within minutes rather than weeks or months. The gains and benefits cuts across the entire production value chain from improved operational safety to operational efficiency and cost savings, real-time production surveillance, optimized production, early problem detection, improved Safety, Organizational/Cross-discipline collaboration, data Centralization and Efficiency. The DOF system did not come without its peculiar challenges observed both at the planning, execution and post evaluation stages which includes selection of an appropriate Data Gathering & acquisition system, Parts interchangeability and device integration with existing field devices, high data latency due to bandwidth, signal strength etc., damage of sensors and transmitters on wellheads during operations such as slickline & WHM activities, short battery life, maintenance, and replacement frequency etc. The challenges impacted on the project schedule and cost but created great lessons learnt and improved the DOF learning curve for the company. The Oredo Digital Oil Field represents a future of the oil and gas industry in tandem with the industry 4.0 attributes of using digital technology to drive efficiency, reduce operating expenses and apply surveillance best practices which is required for the survival of the Oil and Gas industry. The advent of the 5G technology with its attendant influence on data transmission, latency and bandwidth has the potential to drive down the cost of automated data transmission and improve the performance of data gathering further increasing the efficiency of the DOF system. Improvements in digital integration technologies, computing power, cloud computing and sensing technologies will further strengthen the future of the DOF. There is need for synergy between the engineering team, IT, and instrumentation engineers to fully manage the system to avoid failures that may arise from interface management issues. Battery life status should always be monitored to ensure continuous streaming of real field data. New set of competencies which revolves around a marriage of traditional Petro-technical skills with data analytic skills is required to further maximize benefit from the DOF system. NPDC needs to groom and encourage staff to venture into these data analytic skill pools to develop knowledge-intelligence required to maximize benefit for the Oredo Digital Oil Field and transfer this knowledge to other NPDC Asset.

Quantifying Economic Uncertainties and Risks in the Oil and Gas Industry

2021 ◽  
pp. 154-184
Author(s):  
Sorin Alexandru Gheorghiu ◽  
Cătălin Popescu
Keyword(s):  
Business Performance ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Water Injection ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Oil Field ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Field Development ◽  
Drilling Rig ◽  
Oil Field Development ◽  
Oil Gas

The present economic model is intended to provide an example of how to take into consideration risks and uncertainties in the case of a field that is developed with water injection. The risks and uncertainties are related, on one hand to field operations (drilling time, delays due to drilling problems, rig failures and materials supply, electric submersible pump [ESP] installations failures with the consequences of losing the well), and on the other hand, the second set of uncertainties are related to costs (operational expenditures-OPEX and capital expenditures-CAPEX, daily drilling rig costs), prices (oil, gas, separation, and water injection preparation), production profiles, and discount factor. All the calculations are probabilistic. The authors are intending to provide a comprehensive solution for assessing the business performance of an oil field development.

scholarly journals 3PL provider selection in oil and gas industry using the analytic hierarchy process: A case study in oil-field services company X

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyen Thi Duc Nguyen ◽  
Le Tran Chinh
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Oil Field ◽  
Analytic Hierarchy ◽  
Software Support ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Expert Choice ◽  
The Right ◽  
Outsourcing Logistics

This study aims to: (1) Summarize the criteria for selecting 3PL Provider in supply chain management from literature review and apply these criteria to build the criteria model in choosing 3PL Provider for oilfield services company X for the purpose of expanding their market in the oil and gas industry and (2) Analyze, evaluate two 3PL Providers, along with a new 3PL Provider and suggest the strategy for selecting the suitable 3PL Provider to meet the specific requirements from company X. By arranging in-depth interviews with ten people with different positions, including Operation Manager, Supply Chain Manager, Logistics Manager, Base Manager and Logistics Specialist, along with AHP approach and expert choice 11.0 software support in collecting, processing and synthesizing data to evaluate and determine the appropriate 3 PL Provider for company X. In this study, three 3PL Providers have been chosen for analyzing and evaluating – 3PL Providers A, B, and C. The final results demonstrate that there are six main criteria and 13 sub-criteria in choosing 3PL Provider for oilfield services company X. The six main criteria are Performance, Price, Services, Quality assurance, IT system and Intangible values. The results and hypothetical situations have also been presented and discussed again with the expert logistics group to get their feedback about the practicability of the built model. The expert logistics group has agreed that the built criteria model and results are appropriate and adequate for evaluating and selecting a suitable 3PL Provider from the company’s specific demands. Consequently, this study can also be applied for similar purposes in other companies and shipping agents who need to work with outsourcing logistics services in oil and gas industry by using this built criteria model and synthesis results to find out the right decision for selecting 3PL Provider.

APPLICATION OF MATERIALS BASED ON DIATOMITE AND OPOKASIN THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY

2017 ◽  
pp. 87-90
Author(s):  
P. V. Smirnov ◽  
L. V. Taranova
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Oil Field ◽  
Gas Industry

The paper reviews the possibilities of using of silicon opal-cristobalite rocks (diatomite and opokas) in Western Siberiain industries associated with the production and transportation of hydrocarbons, oil field construction, environmental protection in the areas of intensive technogenic influence. Also the data is summarized on the possibility of their use for the production of proppants, adsorbents, additives in cement slurries.

Prospects of using fiberglass and polymer-metal pipes in the oil and gas industry

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-139
Author(s):  
A. A. Tolmachev ◽  
V. A. Ivanov
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Oil Field ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Complex Task ◽  
Safe Operation ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Steel Pipes ◽  
Polymer Metal ◽  
Metal Pipes

One of the most important criteria for ensuring the safe operation of the facility and increasing its durability is its reliability. Ensuring the safe operation of pipelines is in many ways a problem of increasing their reliability and durability and seems to be a complex task, which includes solving technical and technological, as well as economic and organizational aspects. To date, emergencies related to the rupture and damage to steel pipelines because of their operational wear and exposure to external factors are still the most frequent cause of accidents in the oil field. Despite the fact that numerous studies are devoted to this problem, at present it has not yet been completely resolved, and many questions still remain open. In this article, we are considering the prospects of using fiberglass and polymer-metal pipes in the oil and gas industry as an alternative to steel pipes. 

Alaska’s North Slope May Yet See Its Renaissance in Arctic Exploration

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (10) ◽  
pp. 17-22
Author(s):  
Pat Davis Szymczak
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Barents Sea ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Gas Production ◽  
Oil Field ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Energy Information Administration ◽  
Gas Field ◽  
The Us ◽  
Arctic Exploration

It wasn’t too long ago that Arctic oil and gas exploration enjoyed celebrity status as the industry’s last frontier, chock full of gigantic unexplored hydrocarbon deposits just waiting to be developed. Fast forward and less than a decade later, the same climate change that made Arctic oil and gas more accessible has caused an about-face as governments and the world’s supranational energy companies rebrand and target control of greenhouse gases (GHG) to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Among countries with Arctic coastlines, Canada has focused its hydrocarbon production on its oil sands which sit well below the Arctic Circle; Greenland has decided to not issue any new offshore exploration licenses (https://jpt.spe.org/greenland-says-no-to-oil-but-yes-to-mining-metals-for-evs), and while Norway is offering licenses in its “High North,” the country can’t find many takers. The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) reported that while 26 companies applied for licenses in 2013, this year’s bid round attracted only seven participants. Norway is Europe’s largest oil producer after Russia with half of its recoverable resources still undeveloped and most of that found in the Barents Sea where the NPD says only one oil field and one gas field are producing. That leaves Russia and the US—geopolitical rivals which are each blessed with large Arctic reserves and the infrastructure to develop those riches—but whose oil and gas industries play different roles in each nation’s economy and domestic political intrigues. Russia sees its Arctic reserves, particularly gas reserves, as vital to its national security, considering that oil and gas accounts for 60% of Russian exports and from 15 to 20% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), according to Russia’s Skolkovo Energy Centre. With navigation now possible year­round along the Northern Sea Route, Russia’s LNG champion and its largest independent gas producer, Novatek, is moving forward with exploration to expand its resource base and build infrastructure to ship product east to Asia and west to Europe. https://jpt.spe.org/russian­lng­aims­high­leveraging­big­reserves­and­logistical­advantages As a result, Russia’s state­owned majors—Rosneft, Gazprom, and Gazprom Neft—are lining up behind their IOC colleague as new investment in Arctic exploration and development is encouraged and rewarded by the Kremlin. In contrast, the American Petroleum Institute reports that the US oil and gas industry contributes 8% to US GDP, a statistic that enables the US to have a more diverse discussion than Russia about the role that oil and gas may play in any future energy mix. That is unless you happen to be from the state of Alaska where US Arctic oil and gas is synonymous with Alaskan oil and gas, and where the US Geological Survey estimates 27% of global unex­plored oil reserves may lie. Though Alaska is responsible for only 4% of US oil and gas production, those revenues covered two-thirds of Alaska’s state budget in 2020 despite the state’s decline in crude production in 28 of the past 32 years since it peaked at 2 million B/D in 1988, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Is ‘oil and gas’ industry of ASEAN5 countries integrated with the US counterpart?

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (37) ◽  
pp. 4112-4134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hung Quang Do ◽  
M. Ishaq Bhatti ◽  
Muhammad Shahbaz
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
The Us
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