Repair or replace? How predictive maintenance helps oil & gas firms

The global oil and gas industry appeared to have recovered strongly from the initial impact of the pandemic. The US Energy Industry Administration forecasts that global oil consumption will grow by 3.6 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2022 and by 1.8 million in 2023.

That’s positive news but this growth in demand will also bring challenges to organisations across the sector in that it may lead to more oil rigs being commissioned and greater demand being placed on existing platforms.

Read more: Geothermal energy could cover a quarter of Germany's energy needs

With many oil & gas businesses managing ageing assets (some may have been in place for four decades or more), operations and maintenance (O&M) functions are already critical to protecting the bottom line and with demand into and throughput across platforms likely to increase, that pressure is likely to grow over time.

Implementing processes to analyse equipment functioning; pre-empt failure and avoid unplanned maintenance or system shut-down will therefore be crucial.

Businesses also need visibility of equipment breakdown recurrence and related maintenance costs. Having this kind of capability is key to quickly deciding whether it would be cheaper to replace equipment instead of overspending on repairs.

It is the role of operations and maintenance (O&M) functions within oil & gas businesses to deliver on this capability.

Doing so will require having the correct solutions to achieve total visibility over equipment and repair or replacement costs and avoid recurrent breakdowns and unplanned maintenance that result in slowed production and income loss.

Gauging the challenge

O&M teams are currently focused on four key drivers: reliability; operational cost reduction; profitability and safety. Their common pain points range from the impact of unplanned maintenance to difficulties aligning planning and scheduling, and from inaccurate cost allocation and visibility across assets to repair overspend.

Moreover, as assets age, there is a greater risk of unplanned maintenance which will drive up costs and impact planned maintenance schedules and production.

O&M teams need greater visibility of recurring breakdowns. Unfortunately, today, many rely on their engineers’ knowledge of the equipment and systems they maintain, and therefore risk losing information when these employees leave. 

In summary, teams are facing a raft of challenges: from difficulties getting accurate repair costs at the equipment level through to poor understanding of asset reliability.

New technologies available today enable flexible, intelligent maintenance operations that automatically recognise indicators of failures or defects, opening the door to predictive maintenance. This helps oil & gas companies reduce downtime and thereby increase productivity and profitability as well as enhance safety and equipment lifetime. But this core technology must be coupled with a consulting-led approach that drives uptime and cost control.

Cost control and planning accuracy

An approach based on ensuring cost collection at a work order level has the potential to bring clear benefits. Using such an approach, oil & gas businesses can easily spot recurring equipment breakdowns and associated costs.

Moreover, their maintenance teams can decide whether it is cheaper to replace or repair failing equipment. They can better plan maintenance routines or equipment swap overs and objectively analyse maintenance schedules and reliability.

Coupled with this, there is a need to achieve better cost analytics for repairs. Historically, many oil & gas companies struggled to get accurate equipment repair costs. If frequent repairs were needed, they found it all but impossible that critical point when the costs of repair rose above those of replacement.

The process of making decisions about maintenance cycles, repair costs and replacements was delayed because asset maintenance costs were not easily identifiable.

All this is now changing. Consultants can help clients gather accurate repair costs for specific equipment and align this with data on breakdown recurrence and maintenance costs. Likewise, consultants and operators can work together to develop process and technology solutions to these issues by enabling maintenance and repair costs to be attached to a specific work order.

This provides traceability of cost and frequency of repair or unplanned maintenance activity to those needing it. It also delivers the analytical detail, offshore installation managers (OIMs) and their teams require to make informed decisions whether to repair or replace equipment.

In addition to this, oil & gas companies must find ways of achieving more accurate maintenance planning and scheduling by better understanding asset and equipment reliability. This, in turn, will enable them to reduce unplanned maintenance activities; extend the lifecycle of their equipment; and, last but not least, prevent maintenance scheduling issues caused by emergency breakdowns. To achieve all this, though they must improve analytics and cost allocation information to drive more accurate maintenance planning.

Read more: Shell accused of greenwashing emissions from carbon capture tech

Solutions to the fore

The above approach relies on a blend of consultancy expertise and technology solutions that deliver everything from predictive maintenance capabilities to system configuration changes, process automation and full machine learning integration into end-to-end system processes.

By implementing such an approach, oil & gas businesses can minimise unplanned maintenance, misalign their planning and scheduling activities, ensure accurate cost allocation and visibility across assets and reduce overspend on repairs.

- The author, Stuart Querns, is the Director for Enterprise Asset Management for Delaware UK.

Back to Homepage

Back to Energy & Utilities

Back to Technology & Innovation