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Digitising oil and gas

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Oilfield Technology,


Alex Rabbetts, MigSolv, UK, investigates the challenges of getting the IT industry ready for the shale gas revolution.

The UK Government has announced proposals to cut the tax on some of the income generated from producing shale gas. The British Geological Survey estimates that there may be as much as 1300 trillion ft3 of shale gas in the North of England alone. Hydraulic fracturing is not without its opposition – many of whom claim that fracturing is likely to cause earth tremors, that carcinogenic chemicals are used in the process, that too much water is used in the process, or that a large proportion of the ‘toxic’ fracturing fluid is left in the ground and ultimately contaminates ground water supplies. The process also has its supporters: it has revolutionised the energy industry in the US, there is thought to be enough shale gas in the UK to meet demand for many years to come and shale gas is relatively easy to harvest.

The National Grid recently announced that the UK is at its highest risk of blackouts for a number of years and that, with higher demand expected during the winter months, the margins of availability are only half what they were a year ago. This means that new sources of energy are even more urgently needed. There are, of course, green sources of energy such as wind, solar, (although not so much in the UK) and wave power, but there are simply not enough installations to support the demand and, even if there were, there are opponents to these sources too.

Wind power faces significant opposition from those that believe that the turbines blot the landscape, are a danger to birds and are noisy. Wave power is considered to be risky and dangerous to marine life with the potential to change the ocean’s eco system. Solar power requires huge surface areas to generate power and, whilst installations of solar power in domestic situations are at record highs, there is not sufficient space or sunshine for this form of power to be viable on a large scale such as is the case in Spain. Nuclear power, (more accurately nuclear fission), is increasingly unpopular following the disaster at Fukushima in Japan. And nuclear fusion, despite several recent developmental milestones is still many years away from being available. More energy is needed now and that is why shale gas extraction is considered so important by governments and energy producers.

Learning to cope

The problem for the IT industry is that, once hydraulic fracturing begins, the sheer volume of data generated will be immense. This is already a problem faced by the energy generation industry. Currently, energy producers report availability every half an hour, 24 hours a day, every day, into the National Grid, which is responsible for ‘balancing’ supply and demand. This, in itself, involves the generation, processing and storing of vast amounts of data by the energy generation industry. If the regulator, Ofgem, needs to investigate a particular peak or drop in supply, it is unacceptable for the energy generation company to say, ‘we no longer have that data’. Energy companies have an obligation to hold the data.

Health and safety are already major challenges for the energy generation industry, with probably the tightest health and safety regulations anywhere. When fracturing begins the requirement for companies to keep records will be phenomenal. This is partly because the process is still controversial and every move or action will inevitably be challenged. Greenpeace have already said that they are planning legal challenges to try and stop the process in England. They claim that if a company drills under someone’s home without permission, then they will be guilty of trespass. Recent demonstrations in the West Sussex village of Balcombe showed just how much opposition there is to the fracturing process, even though in Balcombe the company concerned was not even using hydraulic fracturing!

At the forefront of the opposition are health and safety concerns. It is said that over 600 chemicals are used in a fractured well. Each one will need to be recorded for its use, quantities, timings, etc. Firms will be expected to keep registers of the water quantities and quality, types of sand and many other forms of record. The quantity of records kept is already extremely high. An energy producer today, may already be generating power through wind turbines or extracting oil from wells, adding shale gas extraction to their portfolio would increase the amount of data that will be created, processed and stored.

The problem is that the size of the data means energy companies are going to need significant server farms and electronic storage, which is adding another burden to the already challenged industry. Data centres are the environments in which the server farms and electronic storage need to be kept to maintain and operate the equipment. Will energy companies have to become data centre operators?

In terms of big data, the oil and gas industry will evolve to enable more data analytics, from a wide range of sources, from which to develop best practices. Having better well-history, from local activities as well as from other operations elsewhere, can help with collaboration, increase operational efficiency and reduce non-productive time. It will, of course, also help to increase safety and could help the industry to obtain gas using less harmful methods in the longer term.

However, as the big data rolls in, so does a resource problem for managing it. The sheer volume of data will be immense. It is not just the data that will be produced, managed, analysed and processed, it is the amount of data that will need to be stored too. The data will grow in size at an exponential rate, will need to be stored somewhere and is likely to require significant server power to manage and process the data. This equipment will need to be operated and maintained correctly in order to ensure that it is operational and available on demand as and when the data is required.

Data centre operators are specialists in this field. They know what the optimum operating conditions are for the server and storage equipment, they understand the power, cooling and environmental requirements and, the better ones understand the security requirements that must be met to protect its customers and their data. Data centres are also operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so they are a good match for the energy sector’s half hourly reporting requirements. Most good data centres also have uninterruptable power supplies and backup generators to ensure that, in the event of an interruption to the grid power source, they remain online and available at all times. Data centres also have big communication links that mean they are connected and able to handle very large amounts of data.

Data centres and energy companies are likely to make good bedfellows. Data centres offer energy companies the benefit of not having to worry about the IT equipment, not having to become data centre operators themselves and not having to worry about whether the equipment will be available whenever it is needed for the recording and reporting that they have to do.

But energy companies should choose their data centre operator wisely. It is not good enough just to look for the biggest or the cheapest, there is more to it than that. Where is the data centre? Are there any risks associated with its location? In a risk-averse industry like the energy industry this is a key question. Many data centres are located in places like London’s Docklands which is in the Environment Agency’s 20 year flood plain, has power problems and is, unfortunately, a terrorist target. Who actually operates the data centre? It may appear, on the surface, that it is obvious who the operator is, but very often they have actually outsourced the maintenance so companies can be left unsure as to who they are dealing with. Worse, if something goes wrong there is no pre-existing relationship with the company that is actually running the facility!

It is ironic too to note that data centres are large consumers of energy – the very stuff that is the reason for the shale gas industry.  Most data centres calculate their usage of power in megawatts rather than kilowatts and some use huge amounts of power on the cooling systems that are needed to maintain the IT equipment operating within them. It is important then, that data centres operate as efficiently as possible.

Data centre operators often use a metric known as PUE, (power usage effectiveness), to express how efficient they are. PUE is designed to measure how much power is used to power the peripheral or supporting equipment such as cooling, security systems and building controls versus the power that is used to power the IT equipment. The less energy used to power the supporting infrastructure the better or more efficient they are. Unfortunately though, this metric is used so widely as a marketing tool that it means nothing to a potential data centre user. Better to ask what they have actually done to make the data centre as efficient as possible.

Global data explosion

It is the global explosion of data that is partly responsible for the ever rising demand for energy. According to the technology giant Intel, they estimate that 639 800 gigabytes of data is transferred across the Internet every minute. If this is converted to terabytes, (a terabyte is 1024 gigabytes), to make the numbers smaller, this can be calculated as 328 409 954 terabytes of data traverse the Internet every year. Much of this is personal data such as photographs, social media and games, but an estimated 204 million emails are also sent every minute; the size of global data is truly staggering!

Data centres are where much of this data is stored and processed. Whilst it is true that they are huge consumers of power they should not be considered as pariahs. Data centres are the foundation of the digital age and, without them the modern world could not function. They are also instrumental in reducing the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Which is responsible for less emissions? Downloading the latest album of a favourite artist or extracting the minerals to make the plastic, transporting them, manufacturing a CD, printing it, packaging it, distributing it and driving to the nearest music shop to buy it.

So, is shale gas extraction necessary? This is for experts to judge and decide. What is certainly true is that planet Earth’s insatiable desire for more power is not going to cease anytime soon. The world’s appetite for data is equally not going to diminish and the amount of data that will need to be stored and processed is only going to increase as new methods of extraction are developed and refined. Energy companies are going to have to continue to search for, identify and find ways of extracting fossil fuels from the earth at least until the concept of nuclear fusion where we can produce more energy than we use to generate it, in a safe manner and in a scalable way, becomes possible.

Conclusion

Data centres and the energy industry are fundamental to the modern world and to the many advances that mankind has made to date. They are both critical pieces of infrastructure that collectively form the foundations of the digital age and modern living. When it comes to taking responsibility for the environment, energy companies and data centres are often seen as the villains in the piece when, in fact, they are crucial to the reduction of our impact on the environment and are actually helping to improve a sustainable life in the modern age.

Hydraulic fracturing will likely be used to extract shale gas in the UK; the government wants it to happen and there is a good case for it to happen. People will demonstrate, protest and challenge, but ultimately the decision has already been made. Human beings want the trappings of the modern age, the benefits of digital technology, air travel, online shopping, etc. – when they demonstrate against things that they oppose, they want the media there to cover it. All of this needs energy and it must come from somewhere.

Adapted by David Bizley

Read the article online at: https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/exploration/30012014/digitising_oil_and_gas/

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