Characteristic-Vector Tracking for Oil and Gas Supply-Chain Visibility
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Solution Overview
Problem
The oil and gas supply-chain faces challenges in maintaining transparency and integrity due to gaps in visibility across the network, leading to missed or unreported emissions and data anomalies, which affect the tracking and verification of commodities.
Innovation Solution
A supply-chain characteristic-vectors system that includes air quality monitors and supervisory-control-and-data-acquisition systems at upstream and downstream amenities, transmitting environmental and operational parameters to a remote server for calculating characteristic-vectors, securing and encrypting data to ensure integrity and transparency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If air quality monitors and supervisory-control-and-data-acquisition systems are deployed at upstream and downstream amenities to track environmental and operational parameters, then transparency and visibility across the supply-chain are improved, but device complexity and implementation cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The supply-chain monitoring system is segmented into distributed air quality monitors at upstream and downstream amenities, each independently sensing local environmental parameters. This segmentation allows comprehensive coverage without requiring a single complex centralized system, resolving the contradiction by distributing functionality across multiple simple units that collectively provide full visibility.
Solution Approach 2:
A remote server acts as an intermediary that receives data from multiple SCADA systems and air quality monitors, performs centralized calculations of characteristic-vectors, and manages data integrity. This intermediary approach allows the frontend sensing devices to remain relatively simple while achieving comprehensive transparency through the coordinating intermediary.
2Measurement precision
If characteristic-vectors are calculated and associated with energy amounts to track commodity flow, then tracking precision and verification accuracy are improved, but measurement and calculation complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system transforms raw environmental and operational parameters into derived characteristic-vectors that represent commodity flow and emissions. By changing the parameter representation from raw sensor data to processed characteristic-vectors associated with energy amounts, the system achieves precise tracking while managing complexity through standardized transformation algorithms.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates virtual copies of physical commodity flow through characteristic-vectors that mirror the behavior and properties of actual gas flow. These vector representations allow precise tracking and verification without requiring direct physical measurement of every parameter, reducing measurement complexity while maintaining precision.
3Reliability
If data is transmitted and encrypted between multiple system components, then data integrity and security are improved, but processing time and system complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
Data encryption and integrity verification are performed as preliminary actions at the source (air quality monitors and SCADA systems) before data leaves the local devices. This preliminary processing ensures data integrity is established upfront, reducing the need for repeated verification steps later in the data flow, thus maintaining security while minimizing processing time delays.
Data Source
AI summary
In some configurations, a supply-chain characteristic-vectors merchandising system and a method for an environmental characteristic-vectors of a gas communicating from an upstream amenity to a downstream amenity in a supply-chain may be disclosed. The system may be configured to track oil and/or gas throughout the supply-chain by associating characteristic-vectors (e.g., environmental, operational, physical etc.) of the upstream amenity and the downstream amenity with the energy units of the gas transmitted through the supply-chain.