Legislation Relating to Age and Life Extension of Installations in the North Sea

Age and Life Extension of Installations in the North Sea

The concept of aging and life extension (ALE) holds that there exists an amount of duty or time when the installation of an asset may be considered for retirement. Nonetheless, the life of an asset may be extended through various criteria and processes without necessarily reducing the margins below the recommended operating limits. Most of the fixed offshore installations in the UK sectors of the North Sea have been in existence for well over 25 years (Abdullah, 2012, 3). As such, these structures and other facilities are susceptible to an aging mechanism, which significantly contribute to their deterioration. Ultimately, such vulnerabilities pose a risk to the functionality, safety, and fitness-for-services, which in turn cause catastrophic outcomes if left unchecked. As a result, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has been charged with the mandate of addressing the issues surrounding asset integrity of aging installations by the stipulations of Key Programme 3 (KP3) of targeted inspections.

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The exponential increase in demand and world price of oil and gas made the economics of continued oil exploration in the North Sea a lucrative venture. Hence, most oil companies have been given the go-ahead to proceed with oil exploration in either neighbouring subsea completions or original oil fields. Indeed, infrastructure has already been established, and continued operations seemingly offset the costs of decommissioning. Equally important is the fact that the effects of aging occur at a slow rate hence the underlying risks may be mitigated through timely inspections, maintenance, upgrading, and replacement; creating a vividly possible further useful service to be obtained. In this regard, the PSA requires oil companies to state the basis of their assumptions on their decision-making process on ALE. If there exist wide variances from the existing projections, a fresh consent is mandatory before any further operations are executed.

Risk Management and Asset Integrity of North Sea Installations

At the turn of the millennium, the UK HSE's Offshore Division (OSD) undertook the project dubbed KP1, which was aimed at diminishing the levels of hydrocarbon release with the primary focus being the suitability for the operation of the process plant. This implementation has led to the extensive reduction hydrocarbon releases. Nonetheless, the OSD became concerned in the apparent reduction in the condition of the plant and fabric on installation, and as a result, the KP3 was formulated for purposes of asset integrity. The KP3 was scheduled between 2004 and 2007, and it involved inspections that targeted over 100 offshore installations, which account for forty percent of the total (Abili, Onwuzuluigbo & Kara, 2013, 193). Some of the components that were evaluated include floating production (FP); floating production storage; static manned and entirely unattended installations; mobile drilling drills and offloading vessels. KP3 was mostly concerned with the maintenance administration of safety critical elements (SCEs), management structures and procedures which guarantee the availability of SCEs as and when needed.

The inspection program incorporated 17 elements that consider all aspects of maintenance administration including the conduction of SCE systems tests. The outcome of each component was scored using a traffic light system, which allowed the whole implementation program to be detailed in a matrix. In the end, the data obtained was organized into an overview of a company and its industrial performance including the identification of good and evil practices. The KP3 model yielded rather exciting results where the performance of management schemes generated eclectic disparities amongst corporations across the industry. Surprisingly, there were divergences in the production of resources within the same corporation. Perhaps the most significant observation was that the plant was not adequately recognized owing to the complexities associated with recording and classifying equipment, which is due for maintenance, or those that could be defective. Accordingly, the OSD suggested that substantial improvements could be realized without significant capital expenditure through interventions such as proper planning, refined training techniques, clear-cut policies on the expected performance criteria in maintenance and testing sequences. Additionally, the study by OSD indicated that there was a poor understanding of the impact of a ruined critical plant which lacks in safety measures including utility systems on safety crucial element following the occurrence of a large-scale catastrophe and the role of structural integrity and the discovery of obstacles that lead to insignificant risk hazard regulation (Camacho, Pastre, Boyce & Macdonald, 2016, 6). Moreover, it was found that the industry was making no effort in sharing best and ethical practices while some companies went as far as ignoring the well-documented lessons that are gained as a result of KP3. Thus, improvements are required in cross-organizational learning mechanisms and processes that assist in securing corporate memory.

The report by OSD also indicated that Oil & Gas companies in U.K required better primary displays of performance, which ought to be made available to senior level management to assist in undertaking decisions with a focus on resources. This follows the observation that most management monitoring systems were overly prejudiced towards occupational risk data in preference to antecedents of significant hazards. Most of the top managers were found not make sufficient use of integrity management data disregarded on-going maintenance the adequate primacy it deserves.

Developments in Knowledge or Technology Advancement

The final compilation of the study by OSD revealed some weaknesses, which were identified as the underlying causes that encourage poor performance. One of the critical gaps was identified in leadership where top level management develop weigh on the priority between investment in asset maintenance, field development and profitability base on health safety and financial risks. Research indicates that the priority on asset maintenance has lessened over the years with the limitations on the status of SCE that are being unveiled based on deferrals and backlogs. Thus, it was well-thought-out that members in top positions of management must advance their comprehension of business and safety concerns that arise from continued operation with degraded SCEs and safety-related equipment (Gluyas, Mathias & Goudarzi, 2018, 566). The influence of engineering function has also declined with significant margins, which have been a cause for worry for many oil corporations. Virtually, the fundamental element in achieving a balance in priorities is ensuring the engineering function has ample ability to present the case for substantial hazard regulation and assume the role of a backstop against corrupted SCEs and structures that are related to safety and equipment. Moreover, the KP3 has illustrated that there exist great variations in the performance of management structures and the delivery of the ideal principles, especially in the same company. This problem is compounded by inadequate audit arrangements that disregard the fundamental compliance with the recommended procedures. As a result, improvements were required in the auditing and monitoring performance techniques with the aim of promoting of best practices in the industry and amongst companies.

Maintaining the mindfulness of development and the consequences of aging on equipment is a cumbersome especially for industry operators. Naturally, aging of materials and systems usually takes place over relatively prolonged and slow period, and thus while for those who are in constant contact with the aging equipment might be aware of the rate of determination, they are unable to predict change from the start of life condition. Additionally, there exists the possibility that some parts of plant and equipment (PPE) may not be inspectable using the standard techniques thus compelling the knowledge of the conditions to be founded on assumptions and extrapolations. The design life of PPE is estimated to last between 20 to 25 years (Hokstad et al., 2010, 23). Once equipment enters service it progressively determined based on the level of maintenance and refurbishment, Of worth to note is the fact that structural integrity management has been widely applied to the ongoing maintenance schedules for oil platforms that are still operation without necessarily requiring formal appreciation as an overt activity. Consequently, there has been the development of the highlights for the need of direction on integrity management of structures using various life extension techniques.

The first step in structural integrity management involves the duty holder's provision of evidence of the likelihood of severe physical damage to the platform and intensification potentials and the probable situations to be taken into consideration. It would be ideal for the oil corporations to consider incorporating structural integrity management (SIM) system and a compatible framework. In essence, the SIM model acts as a link between the inspection strategy and assessment processes for the installation. SIM plans primary objective is to evaluate the unique design of the structure, conducting inspection outcomes throughout the life of the installations; treatment interventions for the damage found during inspection; the indication of overloading and any alterations in the use of the oil platform (Kusumawardhani, M., Kumar, R. and Tore, 2016, 240). Lack of knowledge has emerged to be a significant limitation due to factors such as loss of data from the original design, building, enactment and subsequent operation. The absence of data necessitates caution at the appraisal stage and the prospective use of higher than average safety factors in the analysis. Currently, inspections rely on the discovery of massive cracks or member severance through flooded member detection or visual inspections. As a result, smaller defects are likely to be overlooked, and they might be important in the scrutiny for life extension.

On-line monitoring (OLM) is an approach that is used to provide uninterrupted scrutiny on integrity and is essential in the removing the need for underwater inspection which is deemed to be rather costly. The OLM intervention is based on the construct that in regards to platforms that are low on redundancy, few crucial members regulate the yearly likelihood of malfunctioning. Based on this assumption, the inefficiency of critical members may be identified in a timely fashion through the substantially sensitive OLM scheme (MacLean & Hagood, 2013, 7). Moreover, this would allow the evaluation to be applied once damage and also reduces the time consumed during repairs and lessen the deterioration that occurs to the neighboring members as a result of load redistribution. Indeed, there exists evidence-based efficacy of the OLM model in cases where the fundamental concepts have been incorporated in SIM. This has been applied especially in instances where oil rigs have been subjected to repeated member severance. Perhaps there is the need to contemplate on the advancement and adoption of a SIM program that would ensure continuous monitoring of offshore installations as is the case w...