STEP LOGIC: the company has completed a project to modernize the production data transmission network of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium

Moscow, August 2, 2018. STEP LOGIC has completed work on a major infrastructure project for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. Thanks to the modernization of the existing IT infrastructure and the creation of new, fault-tolerant and secure IT infrastructure at more than 100 properties of the customer, the data transmission speed along the route of the pipeline has gone up 25-fold.

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium is the largest international oil transport project which participants include Russia, Kazakhstan, as well as leading global oil extraction companies. The export route connecting oil fields in western Kazakhstan and the Russian coast of the Caspian sea with the oil terminal outside of Novorossiysk is over 1.5 thousand kilometers in length. Over two thirds of all the oil exported by Kazakhstan gets transported via the pipeline which is also used to transport oil from Russian oil fields. Given the rising oil production and sales, a decision was made to expand the throughput capacity of the main pipeline operated by the Consortium more than twofold from 28.2 million to 67 million tonnes of oil per year.

In accordance with the strict requirements for the reliability and security of high tech production facilities, expansion in oil production implies not only the construction of additional facilities such as oil pumping stations, rotation camps, block boxes to house utility systems etc. A key condition was the creation of a modern, reliable and fault tolerant communications infrastructure. STEP LOGIC was given the contract that involved the designing, installation, setup and debugging, testing and commissioning of a SCADA data transmission network at more than 100 facilities of the customer located along the entire pipeline.

All the work was carried out taking into account the construction schedule for the new facilities, as well as in accordance with the strict requirements of the health, safety and environment policy of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. The infrastructure created by STEP LOGIC technicians has the highest fault tolerance and reliability possible under the circumstances achieved, thanks to the use of a multi-tier infrastructure in the solution.

As part of the project for the modernization of the data transmission network of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, the STEP LOGIC team installed and configured network equipment that ensured reliable transmission of production data. The integrator's technicians created a multi-service data transmission network on the basis of a SDH transport network. The modernized core of the SCADA system has four data transmission channels connecting the NPSs. Satellite and land base radio channels play the role of reserve communication channels. The architecture of the solution makes it possible to ensure fault tolerance of the network under a variety of emergency scenarios.

To ensure protected communication between the SCADA network and the corporate network of the CPC and to allow controlled remote access, a protected perimeter was organized, and protected remote connections were created in the SCADA network. In order to ensure the security of remote user connections, a variety of authentication mechanisms were implemented, as well as traffic and work station monitoring solutions.

"One specific feature of the project determined by the industry was that the oil transportation process is continuous: the pipeline only shuts down three times a year for 72 hours of maintenance. It was during these windows that our project team had to swap out the equipment, a most complex and challenging task. Throughout the rest of the time they were designing, configuring and debugging the equipment, as well as training CPC staff. Thanks to close cooperation with the customer's staff, the professionalism of the general contractor and careful planning of all the jobs and tasks performed by other contracts, the new network was deployed successfully. We are proud to have made a contribution to the development and strengthening of the technology platform of one of the strategic facilities of our country," comments Alla Savina, Lead Project Manager at STEP LOGIC.