Maintenance Management of Aging Oil and Gas Facilities

Abstract

Oil and gas operators are now being driven to now operate beyond their originally conceived design life and field life. Asset life extension (ALE) beyond these thresholds presents unique safety and business risk challenges for the oil and gas industry. With aging equipment and facilities, operators face increasing challenges in maintaining equipment reliability and integrity as well as operational safety. Aging factors do not only involve hardware but also human and organizational factors. Factors include corrosion, erosion, fatigue, equipment obsolescence, normalization of deviance (accepting degraded conditions as being normal), changes in codes and standards and lack of data to forecast future risks. The challenge is magnified if there is a large fleet or large amount of aging assets that needs to be managed. In this chapter, a responsible approach to ALE, where assets can continue to be operated safely and resources are adequately managed, is provided herein.