Conference Grid

Sponsored by ITC Global

The OilComm Golf Tournament will be held on the Lakes Course at Wildcat Golf Club. The Lakes Course offers panoramic views of the city, from the Galleria area to the Medical Center to Reliant Park to Downtown. The name fits as many of the holes make you navigate around the Wildcat lakes if you want to score well. This course has rolling fairways and fast greens and throws in the element of water hazards. The Lakes course also offers dramatic elevation changes that can be rivaled by no other course in Houston.

Awards will be given for the Lowest Score, Longest Drive, Best Dressed, and many more!

For more information or to register, please visit www.OilComm.com/golf_tournament.

Gear up for the day with a hot cup of coffee and a full stomach! Included with your registration.

This presentation offers basics of microwave transmission network design, planning and implementation. This session will be an overview useful to engineers, project managers, sales staff, and other personnel.

At the end of this course the audience will have a good understanding of microwave networks and issues related to path design, equipment and site selection, economic benefits, and time constraints.

Learning Objectives:

• Audience will understand microwave radio propagation
• Audience will understand MW system design and deployment challenges
• Audience will be able to identify difficult on-shore and off-shore areas for microwave links
• Audience will acquire basic understanding of MW network build-out project management

This full day session will highlight the opportunities, challenges and strategies involved in deploying and operating a WiMAX-based Smart Field network. The day will bring together WiMAX vendors and Oil & Gas companies to meet, exchange ideas and develop business and cooperative relationships. This session will be useful to network engineers, network architects, CTOs and other executives in helping them learn about the availability of equipment and products as well as hear actionable experience from real-world WiMAX deployments.

Agenda
• 08.30a.m. – 09.00a.m.: Welcome - WiMAX Forum for the Oil & Gas Industry

• 9.00a.m. – 10.30a.m.: Considerations for WiMAX Networks

• 10:30a.m. – 11.00a.m.: Pre-Conference Networking Break

• 11:00a.m. – 11.30a.m.: Design Options for an Effective Data Broadband Network

• 11:30a.m. – 12.00p.m.: WiMAX Opportunities and Challenges for the Oil & Gas Industry

• 12.00p.m. – 1.00p.m.: Pre-Conference Networking Lunch

• 1.00p.m. – 2.30p.m.: Planning Considerations for WiMAX Network Development and Growth

• 2:30p.m. – 3.00p.m.: Pre-Conference Networking Break

• 3.00p.m. – 3.30p.m.: System Profile Requirements for Oil & Gas Applications

• 3.30p.m. – 4.00p.m.: GE Digital Energy Case Study

• 4.00p.m. – 4.30p.m.: WiMAX and Satellite: Hybrid Solutions for 'The Patch’

• 4.30p.m. – 5.00p.m.: Conference Wrap-up


Presented by the WiMAX Forum

Enjoy a quick break from the pre-conference programs to refuel and spend quality time with your colleagues - included with your conference registration!

Refuel your body as you prepare to refuel your mind during the afternoon! One ticket is included with your Full Conference registration.

Enjoy a quick break from the pre-conference programs to refuel and spend quality time with your colleagues - included with your conference registration!

Open to all attendees!

At the official kick off to OilComm you'll have the opportunity to connect and collaborate with colleagues across all disciplines in the oil and gas community! One ticket is included with your Full Conference or Exposition registration.

Gear up for the day with a hot cup of coffee and a full stomach! Included with your registration.

Open to all attendees!

Communications are a vital part of any oil and gas company’s overall business plan and ensuring networks are comprehensive, secure and resilient is vital to the success of any organization. Michael Kuykendall, Vice President of Information Technology at Apache Corporation, is responsible for delivering IT services to their corporate offices in Houston and 7 different countries. Kuykendall’s organization employs hundreds of IT professionals strategically positioned amongst 10 globally distributed teams. Their firm belief that ‘the network is the most important asset of the organization’ leads to consistent oversight and innovation to ensure data, voice, video and many other types of network traffic are provisioned effectively.

Kuykendall and his teams are faced with the challenge of looking years into the future to determine what the direction of Apache’s business plans in an environment experiencing constant acquisitions and big data growth. There are questions they seek to answer every day as they prepare for and stay ahead of business needs. How quickly can new infrastructures be put in place? Is there a ‘holy grail’ solution that can work across all operational environments? What must IT departments do to keep up with the growing demands of onshore and offshore drill sites respectively? In this presentation, Kuykendall will share what keeps him up at night, how he is positioning his teams to drive the business forward, embracing innovation, and what role communications play in his overarching business strategy.

More than 90 companies will be on hand to showcase their latest products, applications and technology for communications in offshore and onshore environments.

Enjoy a quick break to refuel and spend quality time with your colleagues - included with your registration!

Remote Inland

Sponsored by WireIE

Your drill sites are in remote locations. Some are mountainous, forested terrain, while others are vast plains and neither has infrastructure to support the communications. Is wireless your solution? Perhaps. But how do you choose between multiple solutions such as WiFi, WiMAX, LTE, 3G and 4G? Are hybrid solutions viable options? Or, is fiber the most reliable option? This panel will analyze the benefits and pitfalls of last mile solutions in remote environments.

Offshore

Back by popular demand! A session that steps into the shoes of drilling contractors to examine their communications trials and tribulations. This dynamic session will explore the communications challenges drilling contractors face when drilling in various regions and what obstacles they must overcome when moving a rig from its current location to another. How are they overcoming those challenges? What considerations should be given in the design process to aid the job of the drilling contractor? How do the communications needs of the drilling contractor coincide or conflict with those of the rig operator or owner?

Your most valuable asset is your network of data. It is also the most threatened. Today’s hackers aren’t the average juvenile pranksters. They are highly skilled, most often funded, organizations targeting your sensitive data. In this informative luncheon, you will hear lessons learned from previous attacks and best practices for securing your networks.

One ticket is included in your conference registration. Tickets are available for purchase for Exposition attendees.

Remote Inland

Sponsored by Vodafone

Moving your data to the cloud has many advantages—instant access to your data whether in the field or in the office; access control settings; low cost data management tool; and upgrades can be processed on a singular server and pushed out to the field saving time and money. But there are still concerns about the safety of data stored on the cloud. This case study will discuss the needs of private versus public cloud networks, how to safely manage multiple networks, and what applications benefit from cloud data storage.

Offshore

Before communications installations can begin, proper licenses and approvals must be obtained. This presentation will discuss how to cut through the red tape more efficiently and effectively. What are the regulatory considerations for offshore rigs? Licensing requirements? How do these regulations and requirements impact offshore installations?

Enjoy a quick break to refuel and spend quality time with your colleagues - included with your registration!

Remote Inland

Across the U.S., pipeline growth is occurring so rapidly that it is difficult to keep up with basic SCADA requirements. The ability to remotely monitor and control field assets is essential, so networks must be built to safely and securely support SCADA applications. How will your network accommodate current and future SCADA applications? How will you secure your network to protect your mission-critical data?

Offshore

Sponsored by Intelsat

Claims that Ka-band is cheaper and faster are on the rise, but some still have their doubts that this solution is the answer to their bandwidth and bottom line expense problems. What applications and environments are prime candidates for Ka-band? Conversely, with doubts of its performance in severe weather, what hybrid solutions are favorable?

Six minutes on the clock please…BEGIN! This rapid fire session gives communications vendors the opportunity to show you what they’ve got…in six minutes or less! You’ll hear communications solutions from a wide array of vendors serving the oil and gas market onshore and offshore. Come find out what these vendors have to offer and what solutions could be your silver bullet.

Sponsored by iDirect

Exhibitors and attendees will mix and mingle with colleagues and business associates in a relaxed and informal atmosphere with great food, drinks and entertainment. One ticket is included with your registration.

Gear up for the day with a hot cup of coffee and a full stomach! Included with your registration.

Behind every well-oiled machine (or rig in this case) is a highly skilled crew. Infrastructure must be designed to support customers, but also the crew. The importance of crew welfare and entertainment as a means of employee recruitment and retention is increasing and so are the expectations of the crews. They want to have the same connectivity that they have at home—from Skype to social media to online banking. Managers want to conduct trainings and provide telemedicine support to rigs in remote environments. Meanwhile, IT departments must find a balance between reliability, cost, and bandwidth for the communications needed to support the necessary monitoring and business applications from drilling to production. And then the question remains, how do you give your crew the accessibility they want, but maintain the security necessary for your networks? How do you provide infrastructure to support BYOD and how can it be regulated to ensure the security of your data? Are companies boasting connectivity capabilities as a benefit in employee recruitment? This panel comprised of exclusively of the energy-sector will share their insights on crew retention strategies, BYOD, and solutions to support the growing demand for crew connectivity.

More than 90 companies will be on hand to showcase their latest products, applications and technology for communications in offshore and onshore environments.

Enjoy a quick break to refuel and spend quality time with your colleagues - included with your registration!

Remote Inland

Sponsored by SES

Designing and deploying communications systems in shale plays pose inherent challenges due to the remote terrain—forests in the Marcellus region, vast plains in the Eagle Ford region, mountains in the Bakken region. How do the challenges from one shale play to another vary? Despite their unique obstacles, they all share common communications challenges to overcome such as choosing secure and reliable networks in harsh inland environments with no infrastructure. What solution (or solutions) is the most viable last mile option in the shale plays? How do you design a network to support current and future SCADA applications? What precautions are taken to safeguard your networks?

Today’s workforce spans from first-year out of high school to last year before retirement. And yet teams comprised of individuals from these two groups (and everything in between) must work cohesively to develop and maintain IT infrastructure for the oil and gas community. Expectations, standards, values, beliefs, and even diction vary from one generation to another. This luncheon presentation will examine the different backgrounds of your employees and shed some light on the barriers between them to help your workplace become more positive and productive.

One ticket is included in your conference registration. Tickets are available for purchase for Exposition attendees.

Remote Inland

IT engineers must design the networks to support the entire project. Although highest bandwidth needs are during the drilling phase, communications must remain reliable and secure during production to monitor and safely manage data. Are the different communications needs for drilling and production accounted for in the network design and installation process? How can networks be future-proofed for the production phase, which can last 5, 10 or even 15 years? How can you cut costs and save time on your communications installations?

Offshore

In the oil and gas offshore community, fiber is often viewed as the most expensive solution in your communications toolbox. Justifying the expense for a fiber network solution offshore has proven to be difficult to say the least—even though highly reliable, big bandwidth communications solutions are now not just desired, but expected. While it may be more reliable and versatile, can it be cost effective? How do you build redundancy into a fiber network? How can fiber networks integrate with future technologies? How can the number of assets using a single fiber network be maximized?

You are designing networks to support rig operations several years down the road which begs the question, what do the communications on a rig 5, 10, 15 years from now look like? What applications will your networks need to sustain? Whether you are streaming video for crew training or entertainment, monitoring your SCADA systems, or responding to a disaster or outage, today’s network design and communication infrastructure will play an integral role in production in the future. And undoubtedly, data growth and capacity requirements are challenges you must overcome when designing your networks for the long haul. What design considerations are made to future-proof your networks? How can you maximize the benefit from service provider/customer relationships to provide the desired level of connectivity on onshore and offshore rigs? Will AUVs be the new standard for offshore drilling? How important are real-time drilling capabilities in your RFPs? Is 3D video monitoring the future?