...GVF Oil & Gas Communications Brazil Conference, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro over April 16th and 17th, 2013, at the Windsor Plaza Hotel, Copacabana. The Rio conference brings the GVF-EMP Oil & Gas Communications Series to its 17th event globally. The conference programme will address the communications networking imperatives of the Brazilian region of the global ‘oil & gas patch’, including emerging issues—such as “Big Data”—on the regional exploration & production (E&P) communications and applications networking agenda.

Just like the 2012 Brazil conference, also held in Rio in recognition of the fact that most of Brazil’s oil is produced offshore of the country’s south-eastern states, Petrobras representatives will be providing technical content relating to satellite communications as applied, and as experienced, by company engineers. The Petrobras case study-type contributions to the two-day conference programme will augment discussion of topics that will examine the full range of satellite-based communications, and integrated satellite-terrestrial hybrid communications solutions, to which the oil & gas industry turns to play a vital role in providing essential connectivity and access to vital applications.

Brazil's exploration for, and production of, new hydrocarbon reserves has already moved increasingly to dangerous, difficult (and otherwise very expensive) environments, where the extreme physical conditions of a hostile climate and multiple geographic/topographic obstacles are as equally challenging as the investment imperatives that must be faced in the remote deployment of drilling equipment. Further presentations will be provided by Intelsat, O3b Networks, Gilat Satellite Networks, Telespazio, RigNet, Baker Hughes, Comtech EF Data, Hispamar, Hughes, RED 52, Tesacom, SkyWave, Harris CapRock, and national operator Embratel, directly and through its sa tcoms subsidiary StarOne. Other participants will be included as the programme evolves.

A developing theme in the environment of satellite communications for oil & gas is that of “high-capacity” or “high-throughput” satellites, many operating with very high bandwidth provision in the Ka-band region of the radio frequency spectrum, though with others operating in Ku-band. This subject will be just one of a range of new topics of discussion which have been included in the conference programme for the first time in 2013.