What did it take to get Prudhoe Bay back up and running after it was shut down in early August following discovery of extensive corrosion in oil transit lines in the eastern operating area?
BP and its contractors inspected the field’s oil transit lines, did internal cleaning of the lines, constructed five bypass lines, constructed bypass facilities for handling solids, re-insulated the lines, de-oiled lines taken out of service and removed a sample of the Gathering Center 2 to Gathering Center 1 oil transit line for inspection by the U.S. Department of Justice and BP, BP’s Ian Livett told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance Dec. 14.
More than 43,000 feet, or eight miles, of pipeline was worked: insulation removed, inspected and re-insulated, he said.
Livett, BP Exploration (Alaska)’s western region development manager, led the Greater Prudhoe Bay business resumption program.
The Prudhoe Bay shutdown was ordered Aug. 6 after results of a smart pig run in the EOA were “much, much worse than we expected,” he said. Pig runs had been ordered for all Prudhoe Bay oil transit lines after a spill in March from a western operating area transit line of some 200,000 gallons — the worst spill in Prudhoe’s history.
When the company went out in early August to do a manual verification of the results of the EOA smart pig run and started stripping insulation a small leak was found.
That was enough, Livett said, to bring “into question the whole integrity of all of the oil transit lines” at Prudhoe Bay.
Full production the goal
The program objective for the Prudhoe Bay business resumption program was “to get back to full production at Prudhoe as quickly as possible,” Livett said. While BP ordered orderly shutdown of the entire field Aug. 6, the company was able to keep the WOA operating, and to keep production at 150,000 to 200,000 barrels per day, less than half of the more than 400,000 bpd of normal production from the field.
What enabled BP to maintain as much production as they did was demonstrating the integrity of oil transit lines other than those taken out of service due to spills until those lines could be replaced, Livett said.
BP has said it will be replacing oil transit lines in both the eastern and western operating areas over the winter construction season.
Keeping some production up also required enhanced surveillance and response capability, as well as meeting Department of Transportation orders and Department of Justice requirements and building bypasses, Livett said.
Enhanced surveillance included walking the oil transit lines multiple times each day — more frequently when pigging was being done.
On the eastern side of the field the Endicott pipeline ran close to Prudhoe oil transit lines and bypasses were built into the Endicott line, including bypasses to the Prudhoe topping plant, which produces diesel for in-field use.
In the interim before the topping plant bypass was completed, more than 350 truckloads of diesel had to be delivered to the North Slope.
Solids capture also required bypass work so that solids from cleaning the lines did not go through the meters or into the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.’s tank 110, an old storage tank at Pump Station 1, was used to store solids for future processing, Livett said.
Permits, commercial agreements all timely
Livett said BP received permits, regulatory approvals and commercial agreements in a timely fashion, “without any impact on schedule whatsoever.” The support from the regulatory agencies, he said, “was absolutely outstanding.”
The work required additional people and BP increased the greater Prudhoe Bay population by 44 percent, an increase of 700 people, Livett said, all of whom had to be fed and housed.
In addition to contractors, BP also brought in experts from other BP locations.
Three separate construction contractors worked on different projects. Livett said that was a deliberate choice: BP didn’t want to have people trying to do too much.
“And we also pretty much shut down all other construction at Prudhoe; so this was absolutely the priority.”
For materials, BP “used only reputable suppliers that we knew could deliver” and also used full-time expeditors. Some 95 percent of materials were delivered to Alaska via air to speed the process.
Cooperation — both from agencies, partners and within BP — was excellent, Livett said. “In adversity, you know, everybody works really well. … In my 10 years in Alaska, I’ve never, ever seen so much cooperation between all the different parties — and by that I mean both internally and externally, with our contractors, with our suppliers, with our regulatory authorities, even within BP,” he said. “There’s usually tension between town and slope — there wasn’t any of that.”
Although there was the advantage of starting the work in warmer summer weather, the weather wasn’t entirely cooperative.
During the work seven major production facilities were shut down and restarted, and some of it had to be done twice because of a major dust storm, followed by a major rain storm, which caked insulators and resulted in a power loss at Prudhoe.
Livett said the business resumption is complete — the management handover was Dec. 12 for the few outstanding items, he said.
And he repeated assurances other BP officials have given, that the company will spend more money at Prudhoe, “more money in the future on integrity issues, safety and integrity issues.”
The lines will be pigged.
“We’re going to make sure that we get all the facilities in good shape … for another 50 years of service.”
