INTRODUCTION

In the trillion-dollar oil and gas industry, success hinges on timely and error-free delivery of product through a complex, high value supply chain. In this extraordinarily capital intensive business, a failure of even the shortest duration anywhere along the supply chain can instantly ripple into a multi-million dollar loss. In this high-stakes environment, proper infrastructure maintenance as well as inventory and asset management are not just regulatory issues, theyre mission critical for business health and employee safety. Inspections, routine maintenance, and repairs must be performed on time on oil rigs, pipelines and downstream facilities to not only prevent the disastrous ramifications of a failure but also to maximize the efficiency and lifespan of key infrastructure investments, where a single component failure can result in million dollar losses. Due to such requirement, maintenance and reliability engineer plays a vital roles in oil and gas industry in keeping an asset in good working condition so that the asset may be used to its full productive capacity. Reliability is the ability of an asset to perform a required function under a stated set of conditions for a stated period of time, called mission time. Three key elements of asset reliability are the asset function, the conditions under which the asset operates, and mission time. The term reliable assets means that the equipment and plant are available as and when needed, and they will perform their intended function over a predetermined period without failure. Reliability is a design attribute and should be designed in when an asset is designed, built, and installed. On the other hand, maintenance is an act of maintaining, or the work of keeping an asset in proper operating condition. It may consist of per-forming maintenance inspection and repair to keep assets operating in a safe manner to produce or provide designed capabilities. These actions can be preventive maintenance (PM) and corrective maintenance (CM) actions. The major difference between the two categories is that corrective maintenance is carried out after the failure of the equipment, while preventive maintenance is performed during the operation of the equipment. For practical applications, risk-based maintenance optimization strategy can be formulated with the purpose of combining the requirements of asset maintenance with risk compliance and acceptability. Based on risk-based preventive maintenance approach, the asset manager can ensure that appropriate testing and inspection are carried out at regular intervals without compromising public safety. So,

maintenance keeps assets in an acceptable working condition, prevents them from failing, and, if they fail, brings them back to their operational level effectively and as quickly as possible.

EXAMPLES

Maintenance of offshore platform Structures are continually exposed to different environmental loads that modify both their mechanical properties and their structural performance over time. Due to these modifications, it is useful to formulate maintenance plans for the structural systems. Several approaches of maintenance plans have been proposed in the literature considering different numbers of optimization objectives: that is, minimizing the expected cumulative maintenance cost over a time interval (as a single objective), minimizing maintenance cost and maximizing load-carrying capacity and durability (as two independent objectives), and more powerful approaches that optimize several objectives simultaneously. For the particular case of offshore structures, the structural deterioration phenomenon is mainly due to fatigue caused by waves acting continuously on the steel elements. The decrease of the resistance of the structural capacity over a time interval is caused by the cracking of the tubular joints. The inspection of an offshore structural system has two objectives: to detect both the presence and the size increase of cracks and to perform the necessary maintenance actions to the structure accordingly. Many authors have proposed inspection and maintenance plans for offshore structures using different approaches such as the following: the analysis of risk and reliability of welded connections subject to fatigue ,the use of methodologies that take into account a fatigue sensitivity analysis in steel joints , the application of probabilistic detection methods in order to study the influence of repetitive inspection for fatigue in joints, the implementation of simplified approaches and the use of practical design parameters such as fatigue design factors and/or reserve strength ratios , the consideration of damage caused by fatigue, buckling, and dents on structural elements , and the use of Bayesian techniques .

Pipeline maintenance The corrosion-related cost to the transmission pipeline industry is approximately $5.4 to $8.6 billion annually. This can be divided into the cost of failures, capital, and operations and maintenance (O&M) at 10, 38, and 52 percent, respectively. Without a best practices corrosion prevention

strategy, corrosion will continue and the cost of repairing a deteriorating pipeline will continue to escalate. In-line inspection (i.e., smart pigging) is the one most often perform. The ability of this technique to find corrosion flaws larger than a certain size (10 percent of pipe wall thickness) makes it extremely valuable for locating flaws before they become critical and cause pipeline failure (either leaks or rupture). The major concern is that a find it and fix it mentality is pursued at the expense of corrosion prevention strategies. Thus, a find it and fix it strategy utilizing in-line inspection at the

expense of corrosion prevention may save money in the short term, but will greatly increase capital expenditures for pipeline replacement and major rehabilitation in the long-term. Although data management, system quantification through the use of global positioning surveys, remote monitoring, and electronic equipment developments have provided significant improvement in several areas of pipeline corrosion maintenance, there have been few basic changes in the approach to the management of corrosion on pipelines until recently. These changes have been in the development of risk assessment strategies and pipeline integrity management programs.

References Crowl, D. A., & Louvar, J. F. (2001). Chemical process safety: fundamentals with applications. Pearson Education. Calixto, E. (2012). Gas and Oil Reliability Engineering: Modeling and Analysis. Gulf Professional Publishing. Dawotola, A. W., Trafalis, T. B., Mustaffa, Z., Van Gelder, P. H. A. J. M., & Vrijling, J. K. (2012). Risk-Based Maintenance of a Cross-Country Petroleum Pipeline System. Journal of Pipeline Systems Engineering and Practice, 4(3), 141-148. Moan, T. (2005). Reliability-based management of inspection, maintenance and repair of offshore structures. Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, 1(1), 33-62.