Gazprom Neft and MTS Tested a Dedicated Wireless Private LTE Network for Managing Remote Production Facilities
Gazprom Neft, in partnership with MTS, tested a pilot dedicated corporate Private LTE network at production facilities in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The project confirmed the ability to significantly speed up the exchange of data at remote oil fields in Siberia and their stable communication with the technological centers of Gazprom Neft at a distance of more than 2 thousand kilometers.
The Gazprom Neft Technopark in St. Petersburg was used as a central communication center. The company connected the Palyanovsk oil field in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, the industrial area of the city of Muravlenko in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, and the Gladkoye oil depot in the Leningrad Region to a pilot technological network with a single digital services control center based on the concept of edge computing.
The network was tested in the 1800 MHz and 2600 MHz bands on 5G-ready equipment of the technical partner – Ericsson. In the course of the pilot project, the functionality of telemetry and geolocation systems was tested, voice communication and digital assistant services for an AR headset were tested when monitoring technological work.
On the Private LTE network, Gazprom Neft managed to combine the main functionality of a distributed communications ecosystem – a high-speed cellular network, corporate telephony (including FMC), as well as an integrated mobile radio communication system of the DMR standard with group multimedia broadcasting (MC-PTT) service.
Gazprom Neft is considering the possibility of replicating digital services connected by a high-speed Private LTE network at other oil fields. In the future, this can further increase the efficiency of the management of production and business processes of enterprises. The company will conduct tests to design the future format of the new wireless network in accordance with the highest information security standards. After that, the corporate architecture of the corporate data transmission network will be developed, as well as the selection of potential technology partners for the development of this system.
The pilot project was implemented by a cross-functional team of four subsidiaries of Gazprom Neft – Gazpromneft Information Technology.
“Digital transformation challenges the IT community to provide facilities with reliable, secure data transmission technologies. That is why Private LTE networks and in the future 5G are in the focus of our attention. For Gazprom Neft, this is the first successful experience in building a geo-distributed dedicated LTE network. Taking into account the wide geography of the company’s activities, the project to create its own network is of great importance and prospects of application.Kirill Pozdnyakov General Director of Gazpromneft Information Technology Operator
“For the first time in Russia, we have created a high-speed dedicated wireless network for a large oil production enterprise with a complex distributed architecture, which has united critical services through a single control center at heterogeneous production sites located thousands of kilometers from each other. The uniqueness of the project lies in the fact that during the construction of the network we used several switching cores located directly at the sites, which significantly increases the reliability and fault tolerance of the entire process control system of the enterprise. “Dmitry Khalin Vice President of MTS for Cloud and Digital Solutions
“Dedicated Networks (Private Networks) are becoming a platform for the digitalization of enterprises from a wide variety of industries. Ericsson’s experience in deploying networks around the world shows that the use of LTE and 5G technologies allows you to optimize business processes on the fly, taking into account the specifics of a particular industry and the requirements of enterprise information security. “Alexander Romanov Director of Technology Networks at Ericsson
