Safe and Secure Oil and Gas Pipeline Transportation System Based on Industrial Internet of Things

Oil and gas pipeline (OGP) projects worldwide are confronted with numerous security and safety risks, particularly in the oil and gas-producing countries that suffer from insecure environments and poor safety records. The present low oil price environment has prompted the OGP industry to adopt smart field technologies to enhance operational and asset efficiency, minimize health, safety, and environmental risks, reduce capital and operating costs, and maximize capital productivity. The industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) plays a key role in this digital transformation by enabling real-time data collection, processing, and analysis from diverse equipment, processes, and operations. However, few studies have addressed the safety and security issues of data transmission in complex OGP environments. To overcome this challenge, we propose a safe and secure OGP transportation system based on a general IIoT system architecture that is lightweight and requires low computational power for constrained IIoT devices. The consensus algorithm and blacklisting mechanism are leveraged to detect and address device failure or hijacking, while the blockchain and corresponding consensus algorithm are employed to solve the data storage problem for various network entities and cloud servers (CSs). Finally, the security analysis validates that the proposed protocol satisfies its security objectives, and experimental results demonstrate its feasibility and efficiency in terms of computational and communication costs when compared to other state-of-the-art schemes.