Wellhead monitoring

Our BGAN M2M is built upon our trusted L-band satellite network that offers up to 99.9% uptime. It’s perfect for the monitoring and control of assets and infrastructure in remote locations around the world.

Using robust and lightweight hardware, BGAN M2M works in partnership with applications offering a range of services such as remote terminal management, debugging and configuration options, so that real-time surveillance can be implemented to ensure safety and efficiency of production.

Customer challenge

With oil and gas companies under increasing pressure to reduce costs and improve efficiency, the monitoring of wellheads is vital. Wellheads provide the structural and pressure-containing interface for drilling and production equipment and need to operate at optimal levels to ensure production is maximised.

Wellhead performance data can also help predict maintenance requirements, which allows for planning of downtime and avoiding unnecessary revenue losses. Ensuring equipment is operating at optimal levels also helps to prevent accidents such as explosions and leaks, which beyond health and safety risks, can lead to significant environmental damage in the form of water and air contamination. 

Due to the often-remote locations of reservoirs, cellular service can be spotty, meaning that costly infrastructure needs to be installed for connectivity. Failing this means that engineers need to physically visit sites to assess conditions and performance. Not only is this inefficient, it requires long travel times and needless risk.

Our solution

Inmarsat’s BGAN M2M provides satellite connectivity that enables continuous access to these hard-to-reach sites and can assist wellhead monitoring. Flow rates can be assessed to ensure optimum efficiency of wells. This assessment also provides insight into the by-product levels of the wells.

The Inmarsat BGAN M2M service operates on our L-band network, which provides military-grade safety and security. It is the most reliable satellite network available, and is the ideal satellite network for wellhead monitoring, as it provides up to 99.9% uptime, in any continental location aside from the far poles. Its robust capabilities operate even in adverse weather conditions, such as heavy rain, where other satcom networks may struggle.

The manual capture and calculation of by-product information can be time consuming and costly. Inmarsat terminals can easily be fitted with devices that directly calculate by-product percentages, saving operators from costly field trips.

By linking multiple safety systems, connected wellhead monitoring allows several points to be observed at all times, ensuring immediate notification and identification of problems, so that shutdowns can be avoided or minimised. This also allows for problems to be prioritised so they can be addressed according to their level of urgency. This kind of issue management can prevent escalation of damages and costs that can occur when manual visits only happen according to set schedules.

Lastly, wellhead monitoring can provide operators with the hydrocarbon production information required by national governments in the form of custody transfer reports. Usually, this information is gathered manually by an employee who must travel to the wellhead to collect the data in person and then enter it into the system. Connected terminals mean that these reports can be pulled together over Inmarsat BGAN M2M and sent to relevant regulatory bodies, saving costly and sometimes hazardous travel.

The service features robust and compact terminals, such as the Hughes BGAN 9502, which are easy to install and are Class 1 Division 2 certificated, so can withstand hostile environmental conditions. With low monthly data usage rates and hardware with a long lifespan of at least ten years, the total cost of ownership for the Inmarsat powered service is minimal compared to the cost of dispatching technicians to a remote site and include the added benefit of achieving a higher continuity of service.