Ensuring the Integrity of Oil and Gas Assets

Introduction

Ensuring the integrity of oil and gas assets is a challenge for oil and gas operators. There are thousands of pieces of equipment and various structures requiring some level of reliability for O&G production, transportation, and refining, including but not limited to, fixed equipment, rotating equipment, instrumentation and controls, structural supports, buildings, etc. Moreover, there are countless reliability functions, programs and systems to consider like maintenance, operations, internal corrosion monitoring, cathodic protection, coatings, material selection, inspection, loss prevention, behavioral safety, management of change, process safety, security, fire safety, etc. Effectively ensuring the integrity of these infrastructures with a wide variety of functions is challenging. This article covers the importance of these areas.

Offshore Structures

Offshore O&G structures include process platforms, wellhead platforms, jetties, offshore accommodation modules, rigs, etc. These offshore structures are very prone to corrosion due to their environment(s). They face different conditions at different zones of sea water: Mud zone, Benthic zone, Submerged zone, Tidal zone, Splash zone, and Above Water zone. Take a leg of an offshore platform for example; it’s exposed to different atmospheric zones as it runs from the sea bed up to the platform. Each zone has its own corrosion contributors, and are prone to things like microbiological induced corrosion, chloride corrosion, and dissolved oxygen corrosion, just to name a few. Ensuring the integrity of each and every component of these structures is imperative, as a failure at one level can affect the entire structure (e.g., corrosion and damage of a submerged zone of one leg of a platform could collapse the entire platform). Historically, onshore facilities’ process equipment, rotary equipment, and static equipment are regularly examined by relevant integrity professionals. Operating companies should be just as vigilant in protecting the integrity of their offshore facilities and structures.