Tampnet put in charge of telecom infrastructure on all Dutch offshore assets

Tampnet, a provider of telecom services for the offshore industry, has been awarded a contract to operate shared telecommunications infrastructure of oil & gas companies working on the Dutch continental shelf.

Tampnet said on Thursday that the company would operate, upgrade, develop, and maintain the telecom infrastructure.

The contract is awarded for an initial period of six years, followed by possible extension options of four years each.

The company will tie the existing telecom network into its existing subsea fiber-based infrastructure in the North Sea. The LTE wireless “cloud” in the Dutch sector will merge into the overall North Sea coverage, and provide standardized offshore LTE services between Norway, the Netherlands, and the UK.

“The shared offshore telecommunications infrastructure is crucial to the TOUGH (Telecoms Offshore User Group Holland) member’s operations for both operations and safety. The existing infrastructure covers 110 offshore sites, physically implemented over a network that includes offshore microwave links, fiber optic cables, switching and routing equipment, transmission equipment as well as various onshore communications links,” the company said.

The network is used to provide voice, data, process control, and other communication services between the offshore installations and onshore locations. Tampnet will, throughout the life of the contract, upgrade and improve the existing network to also include 4G LTE as one of the main technologies used.

The network will also be built to support Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technologies to support the industrial digitalization efforts to work smarter, more efficient and safer.

For clarification, TOUGH is a group of nine operators of offshore oil & gas assets on the Dutch continental shelf which jointly use an offshore telecommunication and data network. The group consists of TAQA Energy, Centrica, ENGIE, Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij, Dana Petroleum, Total, Petrogas, Wintershall, and Oranje-Nassau Energie.

Tampnet CEO, Per Helge Svensson, said: “We are proud to be selected for this demanding but exciting task by no less than nine oil companies in total, and we look forward to working closely with each one of them. The award of this contract is a major addition to our ever-growing offshore footprint in the North Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and other regions, and it expands the reach of our value proposition.”