Securing Business Processes Using Blockchain Technology: A Case Study of Hydrocarbon Accounting Processes.

Abstract

Abstract This research addresses the problems associated with hydrocarbon accounting reconciliation and allocation from the production facility to the export terminal. This paper further discusses the security of the hydrocarbon accounting database and the overall automation of the production value chain, providing transparency to the joint venture partners involved in the crude oil export agreement to avoid revenue loss. It also provides a system that is not prone to malware or data alteration and promotes hydrocarbon allocation among the injectors, production data management and production data security. The existing system mostly in the sub-saharan Africa lacks trust and greater transparency. A new technology will be devolped using Blockchain Hyperledger which is a distributed ledger technology. For the purpose of this research Javascript, PHP, MySQL on Apache virtual machine was used to design and simulate the blockchain network. The web interface of the system was tested using katalon web test framework using Agile methodology. The system will have to integrate with the Lease Automation Custody Transfer (LACT) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), A LACT-SCADANode synchronized system will be implemented in the custody transfer point in the export pipeline, so all the oil and gas Exploration and Production (E&Ps) companies injecting crude oil can view what each company in the network injected and also the quantity that got to the export terminal daily. This will be achieved by having all the custody transfer nodes of the E&Ps and export terminal node in a network of consensus. Production data will be distributed at strategic points during the transportation among the nodes uniformly at the same time, making it impossible for cyber-invasion on all the nodes at the same time. The outcome of this research will achieve an advanced secured transparent system to store production data for accurate hydrocarbon allocation, in which the consensus attribute of the implemented blockchain technology will give each node autonomy. Hence, making the production data highly reliable and reconciliation will be achieved at real-time. This innovation further presents a new knowledge in the application of mechatronics engineering to the oil and gas sector, with its multidisciplinary focus on electronics, mechanical and computer systems. It is the integration of a software system to a LACT and sensors on the crude oil pipelines to acquire data, compute in a Hyperledger fabric network and display at real-time for hydrocarbon allocation settlement