Kazakhstan – compact TETRA communication system

Motorola’s proven TETRA solution can be used to provide secure and resilient digital communications to support upstream, midstream and downstream operations thereby helping to increase efficiency and ensure safety. From providing devices, infrastructure and applications to helping to plan and support the network Motorola is able to offer a complete solution to meet the needs of oil and gas users.

Background
Karachaganak is located near the town of Aksai in north-west Kazakhstan and is one of the world’s largest oil and gas condensate fields. Covering an area of over 280 square kilometres,it holds more than 1,200 million tonnes of oil and condensate and over 1.35 trillion cubic metres of gas. 

The field development is being overseen by four international partners – BG Group of UK (previously know as British Gas Exploration & Production), ENI (Italy), ChevronTexaco (USA) and LUKOil (Russia) who came together to form Karachaganak Petroleum Operating B.V. (KPO).

Compact TETRA system was chosen to provide reliable communications for the three huge processing plants, associated facilities, and for people mobile in the field. Safety, emergency response and improved productivity were the customer’s top priorities, so the requirements and expectations were for a modern, effective and reliable communication system.

TETRA has become a proven standard for telecommunication solutions and Motorola is world leader in this market. Motorola’s experience and reputation for good quality products made it easy for the customer to choose Motorola as preferred supplier of the new digital communication system. Motorola’s authorized distributor Ray-Com is responsible for the installation of the Compact TETRA system as well as its maintenance. 

The Compact TETRA system replaces a five year old analogue MPT communication system.  The customer decided that Compact TETRA fitted their requirements because digital technology offers much higher capacity and more features, especially for emergency response. It also enables the customer to effectively manage future developments and stay at the forefront of technology. These are very important factors for a world leading company like KPO.

Customer Needs
• High reliability
• Resilience
• Robust equipment in all conditions
• Factory mutual subscribers availability
• Full duplex call
• High system capacity
• Additional features upgrade in future
• Centralized network management features
• Emergency call and group calls

Motorola Solution
The Compact TETRA system covers the entire gas field, three production facilities, all drilling sites, campuses, Aksai town and roads between Aksai and Karachaganak Field. This makes up a total coverage area of 25x25 km. To ensure full coverage the system will grow to 8 sites. The first 2 sites were installed in December 2003 and an additional 4 sites were added in April 2004. A further 2 sites will be added to cover the whole route to Uralsk, the nearest city and airport.

When the system was first installed on 2 sites, 50 users were added to the system for testing in parallel with the old system. When all sites are operational, the number of users will increase to more than 500. The users on the system are mainly managers, supervisors and workers at the production facilities. Due to the potentially hazardous working environment in the plants, the security levels are very high. The safety of the workers is paramount. The emergency and priority call features on the terminals enable staff to override all other calls on the channel and react instantly in critical situations. Different emergency scenarios are configured on the system and activated according to the nature of the incident. 

The Motorola terminals are very user friendly and easy to set up. This is a great advantage since minimal training was required for the staff to become familiar with their new communication system. 

The Compact TETRA system is in operation 24 hours a day, which requires the system to provide high reliability and fault tolerance. The effective and short installation process ensured that the system was up and running very quickly once the associated infrastructure was in place, generally less than one week for each site. 

Due to the system’s modular design, it will be possible to add additional features and functionalities to the system as requirements change. This is particularly important for a company like Karachaganak Petroleum which is constantly striving to stay ahead in an ever growing oil-gas market. 

Another benefit of the system is that staff can send Short Data messages to each other and the dispatcher, which increases workflow efficiency and reduces room for error. Due to the extreme weather conditions (from +40c in the summer down to -40c in the winter), there are plans to implement an AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location) solution, which will enable the customer to locate any vehicles which may have broken down or become lost, particularly in winter blizzards when recovery time can be critical.

Benefits
• High reliability and fault tolerance
• High system capacity
• Effective frequency utilization
• Short implementation process
• Possibility to upgrade system with additional features e.g. broad system announcement, dynamic re-grouping, group calls scanning
• Improved security level for the staff due to the emergency call feature on terminals