Why does reliability matter so much for oil and gas equipment?
Oil and gas equipment has a very long service life and failures are expensive — production loss plus environmental penalties — so reliability carries more weight here than equipment cost does. A Brazilian oil producer used BQR consulting and apmOptimizer to cut downtime on a crude oil transfer system.
Oil and gas equipment has very long service life, and the cost of failures is very high due to production loss and environmental penalties. For these reasons, reliability of oil and gas equipment is paramount.
A Brazilian oil producer used BQR’s consulting services and the apmOptimizerTM software in order to significantly reduce downtime of a crude oil transfer system.
What was the problem?
- Analyze the crude oil transfer system with many sub-systems: Pipelines network, Different motorized and manual valves, pumps with electric motors, Oil storage tanks, and sensors.
- Propose changes in system configuration, and optimize maintenance and logistics.
What was done?
- The crude oil transfer system model was built based on data from various sources: P&ID, Field failure and maintenance logs, international sources, and experience of experts.
- Statistical analysis of maintenance logs provided equipment failure distributions.
- apmOptimizerTM software was used to calculate the system performance and optimize the maintenance.
What were the results?
- A recommendation was made to add standby units, critical for availability.
- Optimal Schedule of inspections, preventive maintenance and spares quantities were found.
- Downtime reduced by 56.7%
- Lifecycle cost reduced by 38.1%
