Oklahoma Natural Gas Monitors 17,000 Miles of Pipeline

Oklahoma Natural Gas (ONG), founded in 1906, is one of the oldest corporations in Oklahoma and serves over 800,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers. It services almost 17,000 miles of distribution mains and is a trusted and reliable supplier of energy and natural gas to the people of Oklahoma.

Challenges

When the Office of Pipeline Safety issued a final mandate in December, 2003, requiring natural gas pipeline operators to develop integrity management programs (IMP) for gas transmission pipelines, ONG had the daunting and costly process of checking 900 district sites spanning 16,000 miles every month. To implement the new IMP using a manual method, ONG estimated it would need to hire 90 technicians and purchase new vehicles to cover over 150 miles per day, creating an annual capital expenditure of over $5 million.

Solution

ONG implemented a wireless asset management solution featuring the Sierra Wireless AirLink Raven. The key product features that interested ONG were the devices rugged design, reliability and Class I Division 2 certification for safe operation in hazardous environments.

In its original solution, ONG installed 900 Raven modems, one for each of its regional sites, using CDPD network technology. Each modem enabled information to be sent back to one central command base, eliminating the time and travel required for manual integrity checks to provide streamlined, real-time data in a cost-effective manner.

The Sierra Wireless’ AirLink Raven intelligent gateways have provided the following benefits:

• Accelerated IMP implementation – enabled ONG to seamlessly integrate wireless communication into its infrastructure
• Decreased operational expenses and overhead – developed IMP process without expanding work force
• Increased shareholder value – saved $5 million of its shareholders’ investment per year
• Improved quality and accuracy of data – intelligent, wireless solution offered low latency and reliability not found in manual data retrieval process