Presentation: Experience with PI Cloud Connect For JV Data Sharing

Hess Corporation is a global energy company engaged in exploration and production of oil and natural gas. In the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), Hess is operator of, and has working interests in, six major deepwater oil fields. Three more fields are currently in development. In 2006, Hess was introduced to Industrial Evolution's Well*Share service by their JV partner Shell. It uses a PI System interface to gather data, transform and manage it, and serve it out to a recipient. In this case, a PI-to-PI interface was used to collect data from Shell's GOM PI System over a secure VPN according to Shell's security standard, transform it to Hess's standard and serve it to Hess's PI System according to their security standards.

Following initial success, Hess extended use of Well*Share to additional assets and JV partners in the North Sea as well as the GOM, some of whom were not PI System users. They subsequently added Web*Technician from Industrial Evolution to share real-time data from the same oil fields with 3rd parties providing remote technical services.

While VPN technology and performance were acceptable to Hess, it presented a support burden on the organization. When OSIsoft announced the PI Cloud Connect CTP, Hess decided to explore its suitability. Their idea was to replace one of the PI-to-PI interfaces in order to avoid use of the VPN. Hess's business model would still be to use Well*Share - in other words Hess would publish PI System data to Industrial Evolution as the subscriber, not the JV partner. Hess would still rely on Industrial Evolution to publish data they receive to authorized JV partners, clearly delineating Hess's commercial and technical support responsibilities. This presentation describes Hess’s initial experiences in using PI Cloud Connect in a production environment. It will address issues such as ease of implementation, security, performance and support.