Marielundvej 41
DK-2730 Herlev
Oil & Gas
TAQA ENERGY/BP: gas field operation
IMPROVED BY > $ 5 MILLION
Taqa Energy B.V., formerly BP Netherlands, has gained more than USD 5 million extra from their mature North Sea gas compression field by combining predictive information on asset performance and condition with business objectives.
Many routes to more uptime
- 2% increase in reliability and availability of critical production assets
- Less scheduled maintenance by reducing annual bearing inspections from 5 to 3 days worth over USD 4 million
- Minimized unplanned downtime thanks to early warning about machinery problems, which would have jeopardized production
- Lower operational costs from remote monitoring of offshore machinery plus more efficient use of engineers’, having more information available
Efficient asset management to meet business goals
“A key challenge of operating a mature gas field is the constant need for cost reduction while maintaining availability on-demand,” says Neil MacRae, Taqa. “To meet tough benchmark figures, an analysis was initiated by BP Netherlands in 2003 to identify processes that lead to reduced reliability, availability and capacity. It included a gap analysis and downtime analysis based on a reliability centred maintenance (RCM) approach. Together with Rovsing Dynamics we identified bottlenecks in the production and confirmed that uptime and capacity of our two offshore gas compression trains are the most critical factors in reaching our business objectives.”
Right information at the right time
To optimize production, minimize operational risk and cost, various measures were implemented. In 2004 an intelligent monitoring solution was installed to quantify historic downtime and assess future risk of downtime and capacity reduction to manage operation and maintenance. A Rovsing Dynamics solution provides online monitoring of the condition, performance and reliability of the highly critical gas compression trains on the P15D offshore platform. Non-critical machinery like pumps and fans are monitored offline. The system providing different information for different people and purposes:
- Management get key performance indicators (KPIs) and forecasts for strategic decisions and benchmarking from condition, performance and reliability monitoring
- Operators and maintenance engineers use condition monitoring to get early warnings about machinery faults plus prediction of lead time to inspection. This helps plan short and long term actions to minimise scheduled and unscheduled downtime.
- Process engineers will use performance monitoring to schedule cleanings and overhauls to recover short and long term performance degradation
“Combining predictive information with business objectives facilitates prioritisation of activities and helps us optimise our offshore and onshore operations. Rovsing Dynamics support us with recommendations based on regular reviews of condition, reliability and performance data. Following the positive results on the P15D platform, it was decided to extend the monitoring to our onshore gas processing and storage facilities”, Neil MacRae concludes.
TAQA Energy B.V., formerly BP Netherlands Energy, operates onshore and offshore gas production and storage facilities in the Netherlands. TAQA is part of the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, a global energy investment company with strategic and financial investments in Oil & Gas, Power, Water, Infrastructure and Mining sectors across Middle East, Asia, Europe and Africa. www.taqa.ae/nl (in Dutch) or www.taqa.ae
