By making smart investments in cutting-edge IoT technologies, oil and gas operators can make the most out of a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
This is while they still meet Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance, as well as Health, Safety and Environment goals, according to Leo Zhang, Director of Energy Department, Huawei South Africa Region.

“The oil and gas industry is in the middle of what is shaping up to become a golden decade. While the sector took a big hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, the future looks bright for energy companies as the world begins to open up.

“To make the most of the opportunity, oil and gas operators need to juggle this surge in demand with a number of pressing policies and initiatives”.

He said this in the build up to the upcoming 5th edition of the Nigeria International Energy Summit (NIES) which will hold from February 27 to March 3, 2002 convened by the Federal Government of Nigeria and hosted by the NNPC where the company will be discussing on how to overcome the crisis and challenges of data to barrel in the oil & gas industry, with policy-makers and industry leaders as well as Huawei’s latest plans for the oil and gas industry in Africa.
Zhang said that for example, the push toward de-carbonisation is leading organisations and governments to become carbon-neutral by 2050. As a result, both supply and demand for fossil fuels will likely decline in the future — impacting oil and gas companies the most.

“To offset this projected downturn, industry stakeholders can leverage new opportunities by prioritising investments in health, safety, and environment (HSE), as well as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives to figure out the best way forward.
“Doing this properly starts with a strong underlying technology layer that enables operators to overcome the common challenges plaguing oil and gas fields — like the difficulty to connect to wellhead data, the complications of managing multiple networks, the inability to support multiple services with existing infrastructure, and suboptimal security and stability standards.

“And this is precisely where powerful, purpose-built IoT solutions enter the equation,” Zhang declared.
The NIES is the official energy meeting of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It was formerly known as the Nigerian International Petroleum Summit (NIPS). The theme of this year’s event is “Revitalising the Industry: Future fuels and Energy Transition”

Zhang insisted that in order for oil and gas companies to capture current opportunities, they need to invest in new technologies designed to ensure steady production growth of oil and gas fields while keeping workers safe.

“Huawei recently launched a new oil and gas field IoT solution, which was displayed recently. Using the technology, operators can build a strong data interconnection between wellheads and oilfields over an eLTE network, which provides 1 Mbit/second connections over a 15-kilometer radius, and a passive optical network (PON) designed to reduce cabling while delivering high bandwidth and low latency.

“More specifically, eLTE tackles a number of different scenarios associated with difficult fiber routing thanks to real-time presentation of oilfield production status and improved visibility to eliminate surveillance blind spots and increase oilfield security. eLTE also makes efficient onsite collaboration and mobile inspection possible. At the same time, PON takes care of scenarios with optical fibers and poor data backhaul thanks to its simple architecture, flexible design, and intelligent operations and maintenance,” he added.

Additionally, the solution leverages IoT-based edge intelligence devices and artificial intelligence to process wellhead service data utilising edge computing. This enables operators to keep their fingers on the pulse of their oil and gas fields from any connected device.

Huawei oil and gas IoT is fueling the future of the industry with intelligent applications, intelligent hubs, intelligent connectivity, and intelligent interaction.