Deploy Edge Computing to Accelerate Digital Transformation in Midstream Oil & Gas
Modern, distributed computing architecture overcomes operators’ unique IT challenges and brings asset performance, monitoring and control, and logistics visibility outside the fence
The opportunity is now: Transform midstream operations with data from the operational edge
Overcoming long-standing midstream challenges through technology
Edge computing platforms: A foundation for digital transformation in midstream
Edge computing deployments that enable operational excellence
Unlock Industry 4.0 with edge computing
What industry leaders require: simple, protected, and autonomous platforms
Gain a competitive advantage with edge computing
About Penguin Solutions
The opportunity is now: Transform midstream operations with data from the operational edge
For midstream Oil & Gas operators excellence begins at the operational edge—the point of transaction and data acquisition from remote locations, decentralized assets and infrastructure (pipelines and terminals), and related equipment (pumps, compressors, and other devices). These assets and equipment must be managed in real-time, often with limited resources and personnel.
The majority of new data will be generated at these remote assets. In order to unlock its value and usefulness, midstream operators must deploy new computing architectures that eliminate scale limitations and capacity constraints caused by legacy infrastructure and standard compute resources at the operational edge.
The newest edge computing platforms give midstream operators the ability to effectively acquire real-time data at the industrial edge to monitor performance and gain real-time insight. Harnessing this data becomes fundamental to midstream operators’ overarching goals regarding safety, regulatory compliance, operational excellence, sustainability, and customer satisfaction. Edge computing platforms create new opportunities that midstream companies must pursue to gain visibility on logistics, improve asset performance, and provide advanced monitoring of operations at the edge. These platforms enable midstream operators to visualize performance, provide real-time decision support, and employ advanced analytics for assets and equipment outside the fence.
This whitepaper explores modern edge computing platforms and their role in driving operational excellence, use cases that solve digital challenges in midstream, and the path to achieving advanced Industry 4.0 capabilities through deployment at the industrial edge.
Overcoming longstanding midstream challenges through technology
Digital technologies have the potential to unlock a lot of value for Oil & Gas companies, their customers, and society as a whole. However, to benefit from these innovations, particularly in terms of Industry 4.0 capabilities, midstream operators
first must overcome the unique challenge of deploying solutions across geographically dispersed and often remote assets.
Factors that add complexity to digital transformation for midstream companies include:
Critical assets are often remote with limited staffing. Operators need the ability to collect real-time data directly from remote equipment and convert it into actionable information. In many cases, insufficient computing infrastructure exists making this difficult. Traditional data centers are not feasible for midstream environments: A pipeline may have one server for 1,000 miles of pipeline, without any computing at the individual sites in between. Additionally, the distributed nature of midstream assets introduces challenges with data latency that prevent effective monitoring of performance and transactions.
Legacy IT infrastructure poses a maintenance burden. Legacy IT infrastructure and systems, often prevalent in Oil & Gas, are inflexible and do not integrate with Industry 4.0 technology. IT teams may be caught in regular “patch-and-update” cycles as a proxy for enabling availability, rather than focusing on value-add activities that ensure future-proof, automated operations. Teams may spend half a year performing maintenance and health checks that could be managed remotely. Similarly, single stranded applications running on off-the-shelf PCs further increase IT management.
Mission-critical applications run with standard computing cannot deliver reliability. Equipment availability, and conversely, minimizing unplanned downtime, are the top areas of Industry 4.0 investment and focus for Oil & Gas companies. The continuous availability of critical applications is a prerequisite for Oil & Gas pipeline performance and safety. Control room engineers on the frontline of pipeline operations face daily challenges assuring equipment availability and keeping pipeline infrastructure operating effectively and safely.
Convergence of OT and IT with limited resources is difficult.
With finite IT resources, the responsibility for managing critical infrastructure may fall to those on the business operations side. Operations technology (OT) professionals who manage supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), data collection systems (DCS), and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) need the ability to provision IT systems and deploy new applications and IT architecture without IT support.
Security is a significant factor for remote assets. Security and cyberattack prevention are top priorities for remote assets, particularly as more machinery and equipment incorporate IIoT sensors to provide performance analytics. Operators need distributed computing platforms that secure equipment across the supply chain, whether monitoring pipeline sections or performance at pump stations.
By the nature of their assets and operations, midstream companies require a new IT architecture to foster digital transformation. They need the ability to run mission-critical applications near their assets, which means moving computing resources to the industrial edge.
Edge computing platforms allow midstream companies to deploy distributed computing architectures that extend mission-critical software applications to the edge of their operations and enable real-time data acquisition, advanced monitoring and control, and asset management. Taken together, these capabilities offer an opportunity to accelerate adoption of Industry 4.0 in midstream Oil & Gas. As recent decades have shown, smart investments in digital technology deliver operational efficiency, competitive advantage, and resilience against industry shocks.
Edge Computing
Edge computing is the cornerstone of a successful digital transformation effort in Oil & Gas. By maximizing uptime and providing real-time access to mission-critical data, edge computing helps upstream and midstream companies maximize environmental benefit, worker and asset safety, and the bottom line.
Digital Transformation Tools
Data analytics
Innovations in Oil & Gas
Predictive maintenance
Autonomous operations
Digital twins/ modeling
Lowest-cost routing
Machine learning (ML)
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Results in the Field
Exploration sites
Drilling operations
Plants & refineries
Pipelines
Edge computing platforms: A foundation for transformation of midstream operations
Edge computing enables midstream operators to restructure their data management strategy using a distributed information architecture that collects and processes data at the edge of a computer network. In this distributed model, secure data collection and processing occur locally (e.g., at the pump, pipeline, or remote data closet, for example) with limited or no connectivity to a centralized cloud or remote data center. Once acquired, data can then be sent on-premises to a central control room or to the cloud for analysis and management. The edge computing platform’s close proximity to remote equipment reduces latency and balances bandwidth utilization, two factors that constrain the scale and capacity of legacy hardware.
Industrial edge computing platforms incorporate a redundant architecture to maximize application availability, provide fault tolerance, and minimize interruptions caused by a single point of failure. They deliver server performance in a ruggedized form factor that is ideal for midstream environments and requires zero IT maintenance. This industrial grade design enables them to be installed at the edge, directly alongside compressors, pumps, or other equipment at terminals and pipelines. Platforms that are purpose-built for the industrial edge also meet IT and security standards right out of the box, ensuring fast implementation that fulfills IT requirements but does not require IT resources to deploy.
Modern edge computing platforms also facilitate highly efficient operations via virtualization, allowing multiple applications to run on a single node. These solutions reduce IT footprint and maintenance, which in turn means lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
Edge computing is a prerequisite for advanced capabilities such as predictive analytics, digital twins, and other Industry 4.0 solutions. With its flexibility, high availability, fault tolerance, and distributed architecture, it simplifies and improves data acquisition and data flow for mission-critical operations.
Edge computing deployments that enable operational excellence
Operational excellence is paramount for midstream Oil & Gas—and companies can leverage edge computing to reach a level of operational excellence that led to higher customer satisfaction in other industries.
These operators are using edge computing platforms to enable operational excellence in three key ways:
1.
Greater visibility on product movement and logistics. The lifeblood of midstream operations is the ability to accurately track gas and liquids movement for customers and regulatory reporting. Edge computing platforms allow midstream companies to secure transaction accounting and provide data flow for data management services. By deploying edge computing at terminal stations, these firms get real-time visibility into operations, better decision support, and greater customer satisfaction.
Asset performance management for equipment uptime. In recent years, Oil & Gas has seen significant interest and investment in asset performance management solutions that offer predictive maintenance informed by analysis and condition-based monitoring of critical assets. As with any process operations, midstream requires equipment availability. Unplanned downtime is costly and unacceptable. By acquiring asset performance data at the equipment location, edge computing provides real-time visibility into conditions in the field, which means earlier detection of power interruptions, pipeline integrity concerns, equipment failures, and other critical issues.
Advanced monitoring and control to optimize equipment and utilities. Edge computing is often deployed at compressor and pump stations to provide process monitoring and control, with fault-tolerant edge servers deployed in control centers running SCADA and DCS software. Additionally, edge computing platforms are able to run data historians to collect time-based datasets for comparison and analysis against expected parameters. This application also makes energy management easier and allows midstream companies to optimize their utility consumption.
Edge computing platforms can run multiple applications on a single, high-availability node via virtualization, offering tremendous cost savings and faster deployment of applications. A single piece of hardware may run multiple workloads, including SCADA and historian software, applications from large industrial software vendors such as AVEVA, Inductive Automation, Rockwell, Schneider Electric, and Siemens, and specialized advanced analytics and optimization applications.
Edge computing unlocks advanced Industry 4.0 capabilities
An effective edge computing strategy places advanced analytics applications within reach for midstream operators. It enables midstream companies to harvest vast amounts of data that lies untapped because the existing computing infrastructure lacks the ability to capture it.
then act on new insights gained from that data.
Predictive maintenance: Today, powerful predictive maintenance software analyzes sensor data from machinery, pipelines, and even tankers to detect various abnormalities such as fatigue, cracks, and corrosion and perform the needed proactive maintenance. Midstream companies can also use predictive maintenance in transportation and logistics to help prevent accidents and improve safety.
Digital twins: In Oil & Gas, digital twins are virtual models constructed from data gathered in the physical world. These models offer a new level of data analysis and system monitoring that enables companies to improve design and operations, reduce downtime and maintenance costs, and acquire new data that adds value across the lifecycle of an Oil & Gas asset.
Autonomous operations: Autonomous drilling technology is transforming Oil & Gas exploration. Advancements in robotics, sensors, and electronics eliminate potentially dangerous manual work by performing drilling and other tasks in a safe, reliable, and highly precise manner.
AI and ML: Oil & Gas has long turned to data analytics, especially when it comes to using extremely large amounts of data to make technical and business decisions. Securing the flow of real-time data from the operational edge offers midstream companies the same level of analytics owner-operators enjoy inside the fence. The next phase is employing AI in areas of decision support and asset performance, predicated on the availability of data and information.
What industry leaders require: Simple, protected, autonomous platforms
Edge computing platforms allow companies to extend mission-critical applications to the operational edge, all while simplifying IT management demands, reducing the IT footprint, and providing zero-touch operation.
Key attributes operations and technology professionals must look for include:
Simple. For rapid time-to-value and simple management, potentially by non-technical staff, edge computing platforms must be easy to install, deploy, and manage across applications and infrastructure. Systems should also offer virtualization to quickly provision applications, offer flexibility, maximize computing resources, and lower cost of ownership. For pipeline applications, choosing easy-to-commission updates that can be remotely deployed further simplifies management.
Protected. Security is a critical factor for midstream operations. As more devices and systems become connected, companies need solutions that deliver security with confidence. Edge computing platforms must protect against operational, financial, and reputational risk by providing continuous availability and securing data from cyber threats or data loss.
Autonomous. A core advantage of edge computing is the ability to operate reliably in edge locations such as marine terminals or production plants. Platforms must run in any environment and deliver zero-touch computing that does not require human monitoring, maintenance, repairs, or support. Edge computing platforms that offer “call home” features and 24x7x365 support further reduce the risk of unplanned downtime for equipment and applications.
Gain a competitive advantage with edge computing
A successful digital transformation effort that improves all aspects of operations can be a powerful competitive advantage for midstream Oil & Gas firms. However, overcoming the challenges of legacy infrastructure, limited resources, and security risks to capitalize on emerging opportunities first requires evaluating and selecting from a wide range of digital tools.
Edge computing is the ideal foundation for midstream operators to accelerate digital transformation and enable equipment reliability, application availability, and new operational insight by capturing data at the point of origin. In doing so, midstream companies can achieve the results that matter most: increased employee safety, improved decision making and visibility, operational excellence, lower carbon footprint, and increased customer satisfaction for greater profitability.