Synectics has deployed a tailored CCTV solution to protect the world’s largest Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) plant in Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar.

The $18 – 19 billion Pearl GTL Project in Ras Laffan Industrial City is a joint development between Qatar Petroleum and Shell. It spans 2.5 square kilometres—roughly the size of New York’s Central Park. Around 52,000 personnel from over 50 countries helped construct the plant, which converts natural gas into valuable, cleaner-burning liquid fuels and products such as GTL gasoil, naphtha, kerosene, normal paraffins, and base oils. Securing this world-class energy project was vital.

For Page Europa, the telecommunications project contractor responsible for security system specification, the CCTV system provider had to meet several core challenges.

Because of its extensive experience providing CCTV solutions for large-scale projects in the oil and gas industry and having worked on previous projects in Ras Laffan, Page Europa turned to Synectics for a solution to fulfil the complex brief.

Scale

The sheer size of the Pearl GTL Project presented a significant challenge. Page Europa needed a fully digital CCTV solution that would protect not only the plant area, consisting of office complexes and the vast perimeter fence (measuring 1620 m x 2100 m) but also the onshore process areas and unmanned offshore platforms. High-end H.264 IP encoding capability was an essential requirement to enable this level of functionality for such a large site.

Certified to ATEX Standards and designed to withstand the harshest industrial and hazardous conditions, the COEX CCTV camera stations deployed use various technologies to ensure effective and efficient plant and security protection.

Integration

While two separate CCTV systems were required, one to cover the plant and the other to monitor process areas, these systems needed to be integrated to allow full access (with appropriate clearance levels) to all cameras, at any time, from any of the CCTV operator stations. Additionally, all cameras must be fully integrated with the site Access Control System (ACS) and Intruder Detection System (IDS).

“Very few organisations have the range and quality of products, combined with system integration capabilities and expertise, to develop an industrial solution for a project of this scale. That’s why we were keen to work with Synectics to provide a security CCTV system at Pearl GTL plant.”

Toni Partipilo
Page Europa

Resilience

The plant’s location meant that technology had to withstand temperatures of -10°C to +50°C (83°C, taking into account solar radiation) and varying light conditions. Ensuring maximum coverage of crucial process areas also meant surveillance equipment needed to operate in potentially hazardous conditions. Because it was emergency-, safety-, and production-critical, the specified system could not drop below 99.99% availability or have a possible single point of failure.

Low power/network impact

Onshore camera stations needed to operate at 230V AC and offshore at 24V AC. The Synergy system would wholly depend on the Telecoms LAN's capability to transport video streams without losing maximum resolution, real-time viewing, recording, and storage capabilities.

The solution

The solution developed by Synectics enables over 300 COEX camera stations, protecting onshore/offshore critical process areas and equipment, as well as key locations such as site access points, office buildings, warehouse space, and the entire perimeter fence, to be viewed and controlled from any of the nine specified control centre workstations. Any camera station can be viewed on the 42-inch wall display monitor connected to Synergy and controlled using Synergy EX250 CCTV control keyboards.

All cameras, a combination of fixed and PTZ COEX camera stations, are connected using single-fibre operation to a Synectics e100 video encoder within marshalling cabinets. These enable footage to be streamed via the LAN system to the central PSN servers, where all footage is recorded. The H.264 encoding technology provides high-quality CCTV footage using minimum network storage. In conjunction with a multicasting network solution, this ensures valuable bandwidth is available for other essential site security solutions.

The COEX camera stations use various technologies to ensure effective and efficient plant and security protection. Day/night capability, up to 18x optical zoom, IR enhancement technology, autofocus, adaptive noise reduction (to eliminate streaking), and low-light technology all ensure the clearest picture is possible, whatever the conditions.

The Pearl GTL CCTV solution developed by Synectics is fully integrated with the third-party ACS and IDS systems, a critical component for a maximum-security site like this. Any incident these systems detect generates an audio and visual alarm on the control monitors. This alarm automatically triggers a switch in the recording profile, which increases the resolution and bit rate, allowing real-time recording for mission-critical incidents. The recordings are then logged in a separate Incident Locker for later retrieval and review.

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