Private 5G Practice in Oil and Gas Industry

Abstract The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has taken active steps to adopt cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Cloud, 5G, 3D printing, robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to drive domestic value creation, improve localization, and maximize long-term economic growth and diversification. This is accelerating the digital transformation across many sectors such as energy, mining and logistics, tourism and culture and education, and advancing their business operation activities. Saudi Aramco, a world leader in hydrocarbons exploration, production, refining, distribution and marketing, and one of the world's largest exporters of crude oil and natural gas liquids, has always been at the forefront of technologies and continuously invested in digital transformation to maintain our competitiveness. We have realized that 5G plays a pivotal role in bringing all emerging technologies such as advanced analytics, intelligent sensing, mobility, and robotics as part of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 synergy. In January 2021, Saudi Aramco, stc, and Huawei signed a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) to launch a joint innovation program for 5G and explore 5G assisted technologies for specific oil and gas (O&G) industry applications. Private 5G is a promised technology to enable digital transformation at Oil and Gas Facilities due to its unique capabilities. The deployment options for private 5G at enterprise, similar to Saudi Aramco case, could be Leased from Service Provider, Fully Owned by the Enterprise, or Hybrid Model. This report is focusing on the implementation of the third deployment model; Hybrid model, Network-Shared RAN & Control Plane, with the service provider, that was implemented in collaborations with STC and their network provider Huawei at Abqaiq plant. Private 5G deployment at Saudi Aramco has introduced eight (8) use cases related to safety, security, and plant operation. The use cases were selected collectively by several organizations within Saudi Aramco including Industrial Security, loss prevention, and Abqaiq plant Operations. The selected use cases end-user components are novel and had been co-invented and developed jointly with different partners to accelerate the maturity of industrial 5G ecosystem. Based on the pilot results, Saudi Aramco is planning to expand the 5G deployment through Hybrid model capitalizing on Shared Radio Access Network (RAN) to achieve design simplicity, scalability, and optimized cost.