1998 - ZADCO, UZ750 EPC, UAE
Summary
The UZ750 project was a massive offshore oil development designed to expand production capacity at the Upper Zakum field, one of the world's largest offshore oil fields. The project involved the installation of artificial islands for drilling operations, reducing reliance on offshore platforms and enhancing operational sustainability. Ensuring high reliability and maintainability of the offshore production systems was critical to achieving uninterrupted production.
Challanges
Complexity of multi-train processing and injection systems: The project required a highreliability framework to manage redundancy and avoid bottlenecks in offshore crude processing and water injection systems. Spare parts and logistics constraints: Given the offshore nature of the project, any failure in critical equipment could lead to long lead times for spare parts, impacting availability. Optimizing preventive and predictive maintenance strategies: The project required a balance between corrective maintenance strategies and preventive actions to ensure optimal performance with minimal downtime.Ensuring reliability compliance with ISO 14224 and API RP 17N standards: The project needed to meet international reliability and risk management guidelines to guarantee longterm operational success.
Solution
Conducted Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) across major production and injection systems to identify high-risk equipment and subsystems requiring priority maintenance strategies.
Developed Risk-Based Inspection (RBI) strategies to optimize inspection schedules, ensuring efficient asset integrity management while reducing unnecessary downtime.
Applied Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) principles to optimize maintenance schedules based on failure history and real-time condition monitoring.
Implemented a Spare Parts Optimization (SPO) study, ensuring critical components were stocked in alignment with predicted failure rates, reducing reliance on emergency procurement.
Used Monte Carlo simulations and Reliability Block Diagrams (RBDs) to evaluate system reliability under different failure scenarios and maintenance strategies, ensuring a balance between performance and cost efficiency.
Provided Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) to evaluate different maintenance philosophies, guiding the client toward the most economically viable reliability strategy without compromising performance.
