Re: Yardeni and his concerns about the oil supply--This is a very interesting article:
wired.com
Fair Use/etc...
This Is Not a Test
For Texaco's millenium commandos, the war against Y2K is being fought one RTU at a time.
>>>The precise embedded system to be tested was a remote terminal unit, or RTU. An RTU is something like a small, single-purpose computer, the Stormac team explained. In a paperback-sized box mounted on the wall were several integrated circuit boards, each containing chips with embedded logic. Unlike programmable logic controllers, or PLCs, which can contain complex programs to control industrial processes, an RTU is fairly primitive, usually confined to doing one task. This one measures the flow of liquids and gases through a pipeline. Simple as its work sounds - it measures the instantaneous flow rate, stamps the measurement with a date and time, and stores it temporarily in its internal memory - it's a crucial piece of gear for Texaco. This little box is how it knows how much fuel it's delivering through its pipelines - and how much to bill the customers who are getting that fuel.
This RTU is just one small data-collection point in a wider universe of intelligent devices that communicate with a centralized computer system. Via microwave, hardwire, and radio, hundreds of devices like this one are constantly sending data to the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system.
The Scada host computer sat on the other side of the machine room - nothing exotic-looking, just an Intel-based PC with specialized OS and software. But the Scada system is the heart of Texaco's embedded-system network. If it can't collect data from the field devices, the company has no idea what's going on in its operations, can't analyze its production, can't bill customers - can't function as a company. By law, if Texaco loses contact with its field devices, it shuts down in four hours. Right at that moment, the Scada system was polling hundreds of embedded-system devices, collecting and storing about 30,000 points of data.
Cook attached a laptop to the RTU, which gave him a direct interface to the logic in the device. He was, of course, about to do the one thing everyone wanted to do: set the date on the device to December 31, 1999, wait for the year to change, and then see what would happen.
Using a handheld interface terminal, he entered the date and time: 12/31/99 23:59:45.
Then we all watched the display on the face of the RTU as the seconds counted up to midnight. 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59 - then the date rolled over.
01/01/:0.
"Colon zero," said Cook. "It's like, what is that?"
Then he tried entering the date 12/31/00. Again the seconds counted up to midnight, this time to 01/01/:1.
But nothing terrible seemed to happen. No flashing lights, no buzzers, no equipment shutdowns. Was it just a weird date-format problem? A lot of hype over a display? Cook then took me over to the terminal for the Scada system and tried to collect information from the RTU. He entered the command to retrieve the device's idea of the date and time, and the Scada console displayed:
01/01/101
Then he tried to retrieve the crucial information from the device, the date-stamped flow measurements stored in the unit. And the Scada system answered:
METER DATA NOT AVAILABLE - CONTRACT HOUR NOT CURRENT
"It can't get the data," Cook explained.
Gas and oil continued to flow, unmonitored and unmeasured. If you can't read the data, said Cook, "you don't know what you've sold, and you can't get paid for it." How long could Texaco continue to function without being able to bill for the oil and gas delivered through its pipelines? Abshier and Martin looked at each other and let the question go.
Texaco has hundreds of RTUs like this one out in the field. Fixing the devices involves going out to each unit, changing the chips inside it, and installing new software - about an hour's work per unit. The first round of replacement chips the RTU vendor sent them didn't work; they had to wait for another. Then the Scada system needed upgrading. And that was just for this one device. There are all those other devices in the field, with their chips and their embedded logic - setting valve positions, measuring pressure - hundreds of them...<<<
Fascinating article. I wonder how Texaco is doing now?
|
