The many stages of the oil and gas exploration and production process all have one thing in common today: a need for broadband connectivity and mobile satellite communications to handle the huge amount of data generated by digital oil field technologies. Gore Nitrogen Pumping Service, a Seiling, Oklahoma-based provider of such oil field services as pressure testing, well stimulation, fracturing, and remote data transmitting, knows the challenges of remote field locations. To ensure reliable communications from well sites, the company operates “frac vans,” essentially mobile command centers filled with computer screens and work stations for a host of engineers and technicians.
The vans roll from site to site according to the drilling cycles of oil and gas exploration, and provide monitoring and communications services that keep the field crews, engineers, supervisors, and managers—who may all be located hundreds of miles apart—connected for fast decision-making.
The key requirement for Gore’s frac vans? Fast, reliable broadband connectivity delivering satellite Internet, e-mail, and phone. After using unwieldy 1 meter, exposed parabolic satellite communications antennas for years, Gore recently switched to KVH’s TracPhone V3, a rugged, fully enclosed, gyro-stabilized antenna that locks onto the satellite and stays connected—so data transfers go through quickly, and Gore personnel aren’t wasting time dealing with SATCOM issues.
“We just push a button instead of reconfiguring the antenna every time we turn it on. We don’t have to re-upload settings every few weeks, either. It just works,” reports Brandon Bensch, IT manager for Gore Nitrogen.
The need for data at remote oil and gas sites – where cellular service is typically unavailable – is increasing, as a company like Gore knows all too well, with its clients needing reports generated and transmitted around the clock. “Ten years ago, you may have seen one satellite antenna on a job, but now there are multiples,” says Bensch.
Find out more about Gore Nitrogen’s experience using KVH TracPhone and mini-VSAT Broadband by reading the case study.
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