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BP tackles goal of identifying long-term maintenance needs at Prudhoe Bay Preventive maintenance backlog at field being reduced with more staff; fire and gas upgrades, integrated maintenance system will take much longer Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
After completion this summer of a report from the Prudhoe Bay Operations Review Team, BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. acknowledged concerns raised by employees at the field and said it would address them. (See stories in Dec. 2 and Dec. 9 issues of PNA.)
Some of those concerns can be addressed more quickly than others.
Tom Gray, BP’s Prudhoe Bay operations integrity manager, told PNA in a December interview that the report confirmed tangible maintenance concerns that need to be addressed as well as some staffing issues.
Gray said the report also indicated that BP needs to make sure that when issues are brought up, the circle is closed and employees get a response.
The operations integrity manager position is a new one. Gray, whose background is in operations and management, said his job “is specifically to address the integrity issues … making sure that we’re fixing the things in the field.” Preventive maintenance Backlogs in preventive maintenance were a concern raised by employees.
Of some 10,000 pressure safety valves, preventive maintenance was behind on about 10 percent and BP has “brought additional crews on to work off the backlog on pressure safety valves. And those backlogs have been reduced — not eliminated yet — but significantly reduced,” Gray said.
Surface safety valves on the wellheads were another concern. Gray said some pads had more than a 10 percent failure rate in valve tests over the past year and a half, but he said the failure rate has dropped recently.
One of the problems causing test failures at wellheads in the western operating area — the side of the field historically operated by BP — had to do with ice plugs in pressure sensors connected to flow lines. From experience in the western operating area, Gray said, that insulating the valves helps to keep them operating.
All of the producing wells in the western operating area now have insulation boxes, a job that was completed at the end of November, he said. Fire and gas system, shutdown valves concerns There are also extra staff working on the fire and gas system maintenance backlog and the backlog in those items should be done by the end of the first quarter, Gray said.
This system detects fire and temperature and gas, Gray said. In addition to maintenance, there is also an issue with the system itself: “It was state of the art in the 1970s. So it’s more difficult to get parts,” he said.
BP has a project under way to upgrade or replace the fire and gas system.
“But that’s a huge project. We’ve got some pilots going on some new equipment to find out what we want to use,” Gray said.
The system has thousands of components: “In every single module we have dozens of fire alarms… gas alarms and smoke detectors.” Upgrading the system will stretch over years, Gray said.
“The key there is that you’ve got to keep the existing system running, knowing that yes, in the meantime I’m planning a new system.”
Gray said another challenge is emergency shutdown valves in the facilities.
Checks have been done for a number of years on the emergency shutdown systems, verifying that the valves physically close. The question that is being addressed now, he said, is “if a valve closed, is it sealing to the level we need it to seal?”
Some preliminary testing is being done, he said, along with planning for field-wide testing of critical shutdown valves. One of the concerns raised by staff, he said, is that these values “really haven’t been tested rigorously and it’s time to go out and do that to make sure that the facilities are maintained in a safe condition.” External corrosion requires checking 1,500 miles of lines Checking external corrosion on flow lines, another concern, is a matter of pace, he said. There are some 1,500 miles of flow lines at Prudhoe Bay and about 300,000 well connections on the external joints that have been “particularly identified as an area for potential corrosion,” Gray said. Only a small portion of those are inspected every year. That inspection effort will be tripled, he said, from about a $2 million program to about a $6 million program.
External corrosion inspection will require more staff, Gray said, because it is very labor intensive and there are many miles of pipe, all insulated.
“Our problem is the corrosion underneath the insulation on the exterior of the steel,” he said. A screening survey is done with radiographic equipment that identifies moisture and active corrosion. “It doesn’t tell you if the corrosion’s so significant you need to repair a place,” Gray said. That takes going to the site and removing the insulation. Staffing issues The report raised the issue of whether there was adequate staff.
“We immediately added some staff to take care of the backlog in critical safety devices like fire and gas and pressure safety valves. And those backlogs are being worked off,” Gray said. Staff additions include about a dozen company people plus contract fire and gas technicians — enough to double BP’s capacity to do pressure safety valve certifications.
Manning for the long term is being studied as part of a maintenance review that will probably take several months. Gray said BP hopes by mid-2002 “to have a better view on exactly what do we need to maintain the facilities for the long term.”
Another staffing issue was the span of control of the operations team leaders, the first-line supervisors at the facilities.
“Concern raised in the report is we really stretched these people too thin,” Gray said.
An immediate fix was to make sure those people are not pulled away from their facility unnecessarily, which happened a lot for studies and reports, he said.
And as part of an overall study of Prudhoe Bay staffing needs, “we are going to look at those job descriptions to make sure that they do have time to focus on both communication and interaction with staff and addressing maintenance integrity.” Closing the loop Communication issues are also being addressed, Gray said.
People said they felt comfortable raising concerns, but “they didn’t feel like concerns were being resolved.” So just listening isn’t enough, Gray said.
“To me it’s closing the loop,” he said.
“Somebody raises something, make sure it gets documented. When it was raised. Who raised it. And then who’s accountable for looking into it and then that we give feedback to that person.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll do exactly what that person asked. But that person gets an answer on it. And the company can feel confident that we addressed the safety concern.” Where next? So BP is working on preventive maintenance — “the things you can put your hand on and measure,” Gray said.
“The ‘where next’ is about making sure that we get management systems in place that ensure we don’t get in this place again,” he said.
BP just completed a web-based data tracking system for surface safety valve tracking. Systems will be put in place for other areas of maintenance.
The plan is to build a maintenance management system with reporting mechanisms, Gray said, “to make sure that we do understand everything that needs to be done, when it needs to be done. And if it’s not getting done then that’s visible to us as managers.”
The challenge going forward, Gray said, is to have “systems in place so we can in turn monitor the condition of facilities maintenance, understand what resources we need in order to maintain the facility for the long term.”
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