Intrusion detection technology choices facing the Oil and Gas industry

With increasing global energy prices and regional instability, the protection of critical infrastructures in the Oil and Gas industry is paramount. The challenge facing operators is to provide adequate levels of protection and the effective detection of security breaches at an acceptable price.

Security typically revolves around two key areas – the plant and equipment (Oil refineries, LNG plants, tank farms etc.), and the actual product transportation pipelines. The security requirements for each of these are quite different, as are the range of intrusion detection solutions available in the market. An overall site-security system is comprised of three major sub elements – delay, detection, and response. The delay is provided by a fence or other obstacle to intrusion, the detection is the intrusion detection system deployed, and the response is the system and escalation procedures you have in place to handle unauthorised intrusions.

Plant and Equipment Protection

For refineries, LNG and petrochemical plants, the main security threats are from intruders gaining access to steal valuable equipment and stock, or deliberate sabotage. The first line of defence has to be a suitable perimeter fence to act as both a deterrent and a delay to intruders.  As the average plant perimeter is between 6-10km in length, there are many areas vulnerable to undetected intrusions using conventional security guard patrols.  

In the past, Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras employing Video Motion Detection (VMD) technology held great promise, detecting people moving or walking through their field of vision, but experience has shown that they have been prone to nuisance alarms and the sensitivity to detect intrusions has not lived up to expectations. While cameras remain an excellent way of relaying images from the perimeter to security personnel, they are a poor intrusion detection system.  

In contrast, fence intrusion detection sensors are designed to detect the disturbances associated with climbing, cutting, spreading or lifting of the perimeter fence fabric. When an intruder attempts to penetrate a perimeter fence equipped with a quality sensor system, his actions will generate mechanical vibrations and/or stress in the fence, which are then converted into discernable signals and communicated to security staff.  

Of course, there is a wide range of  traditional fence mounted intrusion detection sensors, each employing a range of different detection technologies. Some require power and electronics to be deployed every few hundred metres along the fence line, which must be designed and packaged to handle extremes of temperature, moisture, and wind. Installing power along the perimeter fence is expensive, and creates many intrinsic safety issues that are often not simply or economically resolved.   

These traditional types of sensor systems (most fence mounted detection systems fall into this category) are known as piezoelectric systems and have only extremely basic processing power. 

Typically, they classify only signals of sufficient amplitude and frequency versus time as intrusions, meaning that if the signal generated was big enough over a certain period of time, it was an intrusion. Some systems are even more basic, employing electro mechanical relay contacts (known within the security industry as inertia switches or “rattlers”) on the fence and, as the fence moves, these contacts open and close generating pulses. An intrusion was classified as such only when the number of these pulses over a period of time reached a pre-determined number.  

As is obvious, these systems and technologies provide a degree of protection. They are limited in that they are unable to discriminate between a real intrusion event and nuisance alarms generated by uncontrollable environmental conditions such as wind, rain, ice, standing water, blowing debris, random animals and human activity, as well as electro-magnetic interference (EMI) or lightning. To overcome this, security staff typically cut back the detection sensitivity in order to reduce the environmental nuisance alarms, ultimately undermining the very security these systems were originally intended to provide.  

Today, the current generation of fibre optic based fence mounted intrusion detection technologies are far more sophisticated, handling nuisance alarms using advanced techniques such as Digital Signal Processing, learning algorithms, and signature recognition. This level of signal processing is the only way to successfully maintain full sensitivity during all weather conditions without the penalty and inconvenience of nuisance alarms. Importantly for the Oil and Gas industry, this amount of signal processing requires a centrally located system, so a big plus is that these systems do not require any power or electronics to be installed on the fence line, resolving potential intrinsic safety issues and saving considerable costs.

Instead of a microprocessor control unit every 200 metres along the fence, these new technologies can protect up to 80km of fence with just a single system. In addition, these systems not only detect an intrusion attempt, but will pinpoint and report the precise location of the intrusion activity to security staff, and activate cameras, lights, alarms etc.  

In summary, the ultimate Oil and Gas plant protection solution would deploy a fence mounted fibre optic detection system, linking back to the main security centre. Ideally, it would interface with CCTV cameras to provide visual confirmation to the guards so they can determine the exact nature of the intrusion or threat that they face. The guards would also have clearly defined response and escalation procedures to follow in the case of an intrusion.
Pipeline Protection

The threats involved in protecting transportation pipelines include third party interference, illegal tapping of the pipeline to steal refined product, deliberate sabotage and accidental damage.  

Accidental damage is often not recognized as a major problem but is comparatively frequent and can be extremely costly to the operator. The ability to detect construction equipment encroaching upon a right-of-way or excavating near an oil or gas pipeline would greatly reduce third-party damage from excavation and construction equipment and potentially save operators significant losses.

Up until now, pipeline protection has generally consisted of simple “trip-wire” systems, in which the digging activity damages the trip cable; regular pipeline patrols on foot or vehicle; periodic flyovers by aircraft either manned or unmanned; and more recently satellite imagery.  

The inherent weakness of each of these methods is that none are real-time; they rely on being in the right place at the right time to detect an event happening. As a result, they have a very low probability of detection and are prohibitively expensive.

Over the years, pipeline operators have spent millions of dollars attempting to come up with real-time, reliable detection solutions. Today, a state of the art advanced fibre optic based pipeline protection systems can detect and locate digging activities near pipelines – in real time. Compared to the alternatives outlined above, these are much lower cost because they can often use existing fibre optic communications cables as the sensor to reduce costs even further, provide valuable early warning before damage occurs, and can protect pipelines thousands of kilometres long. 

In one recent example, an operator wished to ensure the contents of a pipeline remained removed from the environmentally sensitive water catchment areas in which it was buried.  The security system needed to detect or deter unauthorised or inadvertent interference with the pipeline, whether accidental, environmental, intentional sabotage, or a deliberate attempt to access the pipeline. Potential threats could be, but were not limited to:

• Manual excavation, above the pipeline, with hand tools
• Excavation by heavy equipment (backhoes, excavators tracked & wheeled)
• Movement of heavy machinery or vehicles in the ROW
• Drilling activities
• Agricultural activities (ploughing, etc.)
• Stream Scour, with properly placed sensor
• Explosions, surface and sub-surface
• Earth movement, at the sensing cable location, caused by: Floods, Landslides, Mudslides, Earthquakes

A system was required to provide alarm and location indications simultaneously to both security personnel at local maintenance facilities and to the Security Control Room located many hundreds of kilometres away at the refinery.

The solution to this challenge was a fibre optic based system, which has the ability to not only detect these illegal intrusions, but to provide details of their precise location.

A huge advantage of the fibre optic system is that detection occurs generally when digging commences on the surface – before the pipeline itself is actually damaged, providing valuable early warning and allowing time to respond to the event.

These systems have been successfully deployed on high pressure gas pipelines in Europe recently to meet the new EU safety requirements and on crude oil and refined product pipelines in regions such as the Former Soviet Union, South America and Asia.

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