Moving towards the edge

In the current highly volatile market, midstream oil and gas companies are under pressure to ensure their operations run at maximum efficiency. For pipeline operators, this is made more challenging by the remote, decentralised assets and infrastructure of their operations. To effectively collect, manage and utilise data from their widely distributed networks, edge solutions are playing an increasingly important role. For these organisations, operational excellence begins at the operational edge.

These assets and equipment must be managed in real-time with limited resources and personnel. According to a recent Gartner report, most new data will be generated at these remote assets. To unlock its value and usefulness, midstream operators must deploy new computing architectures that eliminate the scale and capacity constraints currently existing at the operational edge, due to legacy infrastructure and standard computing resources.

As pipeline operators continue to digitalise their operations, many have turned to edge computing to modernise and optimise processes, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their critical automation and control solutions. Edge computing is an innovative approach that can overcome the challenges of conventional architectures, including islands of automation, unplanned application downtime and data loss, and the lack of a simple way to manage solutions.

According to the World Economic Forum’s report ‘Digital Transformation Initiative: Oil and Gas Industry’, digital technologies can unlock up to US$1.6 trillion of value for oil and gas companies, their customers, and society by 2025. To gain the value of these new digital technologies, particularly advanced Industry 4.0 capabilities, pipeline operators must overcome the unique challenge of applying solutions across geographically dispersed and often remote assets.

Renowned analyst firm, IDC, predicts a strong outlook for edge solutions as they attract the attention of C-suite executives. According to an IDC survey, 73% of senior IT and line-of-business decision-makers view edge as a strategic investment. These organisations are looking to edge as a way of increasing productivity and improving security, leading to faster, more informed decision-making. IDC also predicts that by 2023, more than 50% of new enterprise IT infrastructure will be deployed at the edge rather than corporate infrastructure; by 2024, there will be an 800% increase in the number of applications at the edge.

To the edge or into the cloud

Edge computing can benefit various verticals, including discrete, process, and hybrid manufacturing. This technology helps companies that generate substantial amounts of data daily and need actionable insights to optimise their operations and enhance business outcomes.

As organisations adopt digital transformation (DX) initiatives to improve operational efficiency, success depends heavily on putting industrial data to work. Industrial organisations usually operate in a distributed manner, sometimes with plants worldwide. A mid-size manufacturer often has several or many manufacturing models, hundreds of different types of equipment, a variety of suppliers, and vastly different cultures or nationalities throughout the workforce. As organisations attempt to achieve the IT/OT convergence goals, they must make substantive shifts using the prevalent technology paradigms, namely the mature cloud computing solution and the less mature edge computing option.

With cloud computing, organisations can transmit voluminous industrial data from plants, equipment, machines, vehicles, and controllers to IT/OT applications through an internet connection, but the infrastructure details behind the scenes are hidden from the end user. With edge, the computing resources are placed closer to the user or the device at the network’s edge. Edge computing can enhance OT solutions by addressing cloud computing issues such as performance, latency, bandwidth, security, and proximity. Through these, it can power the next industrial revolution, transform manufacturing, and promote an agile business ecosystem that is more efficient and easier to manage.

The edge approach emphasises reduced latency and provides more processing of data close to the source, eliminating a lot of round-trip data movement. This means that edge computing is helpful for use cases that involve time-sensitive and data-intensive applications. These applications can deliver near real-time performance by computing resources closer to the source of data generation. Moreover, these applications help prevent overloading of the network backhaul by processing more data locally and being selective about the amount and frequency of data sent to the cloud. By keeping data local, you also achieve better security, privacy, and data sovereignty.

Advantages of edge computing

There are four significant advantages that edge technology offers to pipeline operators. These are: lower latency, lower bandwidth limitations, higher performance, and more robust compliance. The most common motivator for edge solutions is attributed to network latency, which represents a delay between an application request and the resulting response. For real-time applications, even milliseconds matter. In an OT environment, unpredictable latency could mean increased defect rates or safety issues.

With the proliferation of IoT devices and other connected equipment at the edge, such as controllers – RIO, PLC/DCS – or RTU, data generation is growing exponentially. Depending on the location, high-speed network connections may not be available or could be prohibitively expensive. Thus, to address AI use cases requiring large data volumes at the edge, organisations are using edge computing to reduce data transmission requirements by filtering and processing data locally. Higher performance is a direct advantage of achieving lower latency and bandwidth. By placing infrastructure and applications closer to data generation and consumption, the overall performance is optimised – leading to a better user experience.

Another advantage is that edge computing also limits the movement of data – helping address corporate governance policies or other regulations that require sensitive information to remain onsite. In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) dictates data sovereignty rules regarding where data can be communicated and stored. Other jurisdictions are following suit, with legislation such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Edge provides more control over such compliance.

Lastly, edge computing improves business continuity. As more organisations automate operations, it is imperative that the underlying systems remain available even if the network or cloud is not. That said, cloud is highly reliable with very high up time, in the region of 99.9999%. Every primary cloud provider has had an unforeseen service outage over the past year – and will most probably continue to do so. However…

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World Pipelines’ January 2024 issue

The January 2024 issue of World Pipelines includes a keynote feature on the digitalisation journey for pipelines, and technical articles on pipeline buckling, fibre optics and pigging services. This issue also includes a Q&A section on the topic of pipeline coatings, and a cover story about line stopping. 

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