Refineries, offshore platforms, oil and gas terminals, pipelines and transportation networks: these infrastructures bring together numerous systems that need to operate from a common time reference.
SCADA, DCS, SIS, PLCs, servers, network equipment and video surveillance systems all rely on accurate and consistent time. When every system shares the same time reference, events can be correlated, their sequence can be reconstructed and incident analysis can be made easier.
In industrial environments where operational continuity is critical, time is therefore much more than a simple display. It is a genuine industrial data resource.
Keeping critical infrastructure synchronised
Oil & Gas facilities are often complex and spread across large sites. Some are also located in remote environments, such as offshore platforms. The availability of the time reference is therefore just as important as its accuracy.
An interruption or disruption of the GNSS signal can affect the synchronisation of equipment. Architectures must therefore be able to maintain a reliable time reference, even when the satellite signal is no longer available.
This is where technologies such as Holdover, OCXO oscillators and Rubidium references become particularly valuable. Critical infrastructures must also take into account the risks of GNSS jamming and spoofing, making synchronisation resilience increasingly important.
One time reference from IT to OT
Time synchronisation is no longer limited to IT systems. In an industrial facility, the time reference needs to be distributed across both IT and OT environments.
Protocols such as NTP and PTP (IEEE 1588) can address different levels of accuracy and different architectural requirements.A common time reference helps improve operational traceability, event analysis and the reliability of data recorded by different systems.
It can also be important for specific applications in the sector, such as Fiscal Metering, where measurement accuracy and traceability are particularly critical.
Expertise developed for critical environments
For more than 50 years, GORGY TIME has been developing time synchronisation and time display solutions for environments where accuracy and continuity are essential.
Designed and manufactured in France, our solutions are developed to integrate into existing architectures and address the requirements of resilience, long-term reliability and technological control within critical infrastructures.
With this new page dedicated to the Oil & Gas industry, GORGY TIME aims to provide a clearer overview of the challenges faced by the sector and the solutions available to address them.
Discover our new page: Time Synchronization for the Oil & Gas Industry