First Chinese SCADA System for Long Distance Oil and Gas Pipelines

Up until 2007, China has been relying on foreign SCADA vendors to provide SCADA systems for the controlling and monitoring of long distance oil and gas pipelines. While foreign SCADA systems satisfy most requirements, there are still issues such as high cost, limited localization, lack of experienced local representatives, and slow to respond to system changes, etc., remain to be solved and improved in the future. In Jan 2006, Sinopec, one of the major oil and gas corporations in China, initiated a joint venture with a local IT company, Beijing East Mainstay Technology Company Ltd. (East MS), to develop a SCADA system for oil and gas pipelines. The first prototype was finished in Aug 2006. It then went through 4 months of rigorous system testing and refinement and finally it was applied to 5 refined products pipelines in China. This paper unfolds the architecture of the system and discusses the system features in detail to give the audience an insight into the first Chinese SCADA system for long distance oil and gas pipelines.