Oil and gas is a complex, high-risk, high-reward industry affected by factors like operational challenges, frequent system configuration change, buying/selling of field assets, environmental risks, technological integration, highly variable demand and market-based pricing, and safety concerns. It involves high capital investment, complex distribution networks, and diverse regulatory requirements. With the ongoing shift towards digital transformation strategies and smart manufacturing revolving around Industry 4.0, companies must adapt while ensuring efficiency, profitability, and compliance.
In this blog I’ll talk about the challenges our clients in this space tell us they face, how our solutions address them, and share resources including success stories to learn more.
The oil and gas industry operates across multiple sites, from remote upstream exploration and production fields to midstream transportation networks and downstream refining and distribution hubs, requiring the management and coordination of numerous facilities and assets often spread across different geographic locations. Each site may have different technologies, processes, equipment, and staff, making it crucial to have a cohesive and efficient operation that ensures seamless communication and coordinated decision-making.
At the heart of multi-site oil and gas operations is the need to establish a standardized, repeatable, scalable, and secure device communication strategy, whether you are just starting out by linking all your disparate islands of automation or are in the process of deploying a smart manufacturing solution revolving around a unified namespace.
The challenges of multi-site oil and gas operations
- Interoperability
- Different sites that use equipment from various manufacturers with proprietary protocols.
- Legacy and modern systems that need to communicate efficiently and often over networks of variable capacity, speed, and reliability.
- Integration difficulties that lead to data silos and inefficiencies.
- Inconsistent Data and Reporting
- Variability in data formats and collection methods across sites.
- Inaccurate or incomplete reporting makes decision-making difficult.
- Compliance with industry regulations requires standardized, reliable data.
- Scalability and Expansion Issues
- Adding new sites or equipment requires extensive customization and integration.
- Lack of a unified framework increases deployment time and costs.
- Managing multiple communication protocols creates long-term maintenance burdens.
- Security Risks
- Distributed assets increase the exposure to cyber and physical threats.
- Legacy systems often lack modern security protections, making them vulnerable to attacks.
- Ensuring secure data transmission and access control across multiple sites is critical for operational integrity and regulatory compliance.
Continue reading to learn how Software Toolbox's software solutions, expertise, and world-class support help you to meet these challenges.
Unified Device Communication for Streamlined, Secure, and Scalable Multi-Site Operations built around Software Toolbox Solutions
Software Toolbox is ready to help you navigate this journey with software solutions, expertise, and world-class support.
Standardizing device communications in multi-site oil and gas operations streamlines data exchange, enhances efficiency, ensures security and compliance, and enables scalable, interoperable systems for better decision-making and proactive operations and maintenance. Software Toolbox’s solutions help address this. Key aspects include:
- Centralized Data Management – Aggregates data from all devices to provide real-time visibility and centralized control across multiple sites. Seamless communication between systems is enabled through gateway capabilities that bridge different protocols, translating them into a unified format.
- Cogent DataHub: Securely aggregates real-time data from various sources—including automatic conversion between MQTT SparkplugB clients and brokers, and OPC UA—enabling a unified view of operations across multiple sites and facilitates secure centralized control.
- OPC Router: A visually configured software tool with templates for scalability that enables fast integration of industrial, business (ERP/SAP), and IoT data sources, OPC Router empowers you to connect to OPC DA, OPC UA, retrieve data, visually map it to a JSON structure, and then publish via MQTT. Leverages trigger-based workflows and logic to move data between OT, IT and Cloud.
- TOP Server: Provides connectivity compatible with any OPC compliant system, with OPC Interoperability Options for compatibility with certain non-compliant behaviors for thousands of devices with Oil & Gas industry specific protocols, ensuring that sensors, equipment, and control systems can communicate reliably and efficiently. Flexible scan rate, polling control & network sharing options plus the optional Scheduler Plug-In enable success in varied network environments.
- OmniServer: A universal data acquisition software application designed to bi-directionally retrieve data from non-standard serial, USB, & Ethernet devices, making it easy to integrate legacy systems with newer technologies.
- Protocol Standardization – With a wide range of protocols that enable seamless communication between devices from different manufacturers, standardizing data formats ensures consistency in how data is structured and interpreted across varying systems.
- TOP Server: Simplifies field device communications with extensive standard oil & gas specific protocol support and pre-configured bundles like the Oil and Gas Suite OPC Server.
- OmniServer: Provides communication between non-standard Ethernet, serial, or USB devices and industrial systems, ensuring compatibility across diverse communication standards.
- EFM Exporter: Supports the export of data in applications like tank farms, flow measurement, accounting, and custody transfer in formats like Flow-Cal CFX, SQL, and CSV.
- Scalability and Flexibility – Where systems can scale, allowing growth as new devices or sites are added is critical. These new devices or sites also often accommodate newer technologies like 5G, advanced IoT, or AI-driven systems, ensuring long-term growth without significant overhauls.
- OPC Router: Scaling through templatized configuration combined with visual editing and troubleshooting to accommodate additional devices, systems, or protocols as operations grow, without the need for a complete system overhaul.
- Cogent DataHub: Allows multiple ways to securely consume, organize, and deliver data securely from edge to cloud applications.
- TOP Server: Offers flexible configuration options, including OPC Server Remote Config Client, CSV import, or REST and .NET APIs to scale from small, localized sites to large, multi-site operations, adapting to modern technologies.
- Data Protection and Integrity – Maintaining secure data exchange, connectivity from multiple sources, and the ability to safely consume, organize, and deliver data from edge to cloud applications is critical for protecting operations from cyber threats and maintaining regulatory compliance.
- Cogent DataHub: Implements secure tunneling via secure store and forward and support for isolated DMZs to prevent unauthorized access to real-time data streams.
- OPC Router: Has Secure Redundancy for high-availability applications that uses pre-shared keys to ensure an encrypted, secure, trustworthy connection between instances.
- TOP Server: Detailed Secure Implementation guide included and each license includes standard OPC UA support with the latest encryption levels and an OPC UA security policies plug-in at no additional cost to protect data integrity and provides the flexibility in user authentication, making sure that the right people have the right access to the right settings, an important capability in a tightly regulated industry.
Want to know more?
Discover how Software Toolbox solutions empower oil and gas customers by exploring the content below, and experience our world-class, customer-first support—rated as "awesome or excellent" by 97% of users—by contacting us today for a personalized consultation.
Case Studies
- Telvent SCADA, Sybase & Oracle Database, and OPC leak-detection system integration at BP Pipeline »
- Optimizing OPC Redundancy with Rockwell PLCs, Iconics HMI, in the Mukhaizna oil field »
- Secure, firewall friendly OPC data transmission between remote offshore sites and central office at Total Exploration & Production »
- Large Scale Secure Alarm Networking & Aggregation at Trans-Anatolian Pipeline »
Blogs
- TOP Server V6.0 Features to Be Excited About for Oil & Gas »
- Prepared for DNP3 EFM Export from the Emerson FB Automation Platform? »
- Comprehensive EFM Data Collection and Export for PGAS, Flow-Cal, CSV & Database »
- 4 Ways to Address Security Challenges with DataHub Tunneling »
- Integrating non-standard serial & ethernet devices to HMI/SCADA/MES/Historians without custom code
Connectivity and Security
- For Common Real-Time Protocols: Oil and Gas TOP Server Suite »
- For Common EFM Protocols: EFM Suite TOP Server »
- For Enron Modbus devices: Enron Modbus TOP Server »
- The widest range of Fisher ROC Devices: Fisher ROC Suite TOP Server »
- Comprehensive connectivity for ABB devices: ABB Total Flow OPC Server »
- Connectivity for OMNI Flow Computers: OMNI Flow Computers OPC Driver »
- TOP Server Secure Deployment Guide »
