STANDARDIZATION- OIL AND GAS ENGINEERING
Shashidhar Bhat
I HELP UPSTREAM OIL AND GAS COMPANIES WITH EFFECTIVE ENGINEERING STRATEGY: ENGINEERING MANAGER: PROJECT MANAGEMENT:
The oil and gas industry is one of the largest sectors in the world. The oil and Gas sector across the value chain is complex and capital intensive.
The oil & gas industry is broken down into three segments: upstream, midstream, and downstream for the personnel unrelated to the Oil and Gas industry.
Upstream, or exploration and production (E&P) companies, find reservoirs and drill oil and gas wells. Midstream companies are responsible for transportation from the wells to refineries and downstream companies are responsible for refining and the sale of the finished products.
For simplicity, this article's scope covers standardization and its benefits and challenges in the Upstream Oil and Gas Enginnering sectors.
The Oil and Gas industry as a whole has seen many downturns including the great oil depression in the 1980s. But this industry has been one of the resilient industries against the backdrop of the ever-growing population and energy demand.
The downturn in oil prices since 2014 has led to a period of normalization and reset across the Oil and gas industry. The challenges of combating climate change have added additional pressure on the Oil and gas industry to push towards drastic cost reductions needed to go forward in current market conditions.
WHY STANDARDISATION:
Car manufacturing and other industries have been utilizing standardization methods for years and have successfully reduced cost and schedule and provided cost and schedule predictability. The oil and gas industries would benefit from utilizing similar standardization methods for repeatable facilities and equipment.
The oil and gas industries currently custom design and execute as a series of projects rather than a single program (with each design being slightly different). The custom design for each project increases the cost and construction timeline of the facilities.
Some of the major benefits standardization bring
- Significantly reduce project management, engineering, and procurement costs
- Reduces overall engineering and procurement schedule
- Allows for efficient fabrication reducing rework and overall cost
- Reduces the overall construction schedule
- Provides maintenance and operations with consistency with improved overall efficiency
- Provides cost and schedule certainty which reduces project risk
CHALLENGES TO STANDARDISATION: Standardisation has not been new to Oil and Gas industry as a whole. But Oil and gas still lag behind industries such automotive etc in terms of standardization due to.
- lack of momentum and push by the industry as a whole to invest sufficient time and resources.
- lack of predictability in the input, due to changes of reservoir composition, capacity, and water depth for every project.
- To overcome the natural reflex among many project managers: to think that their projects are unique and therefore resistant to common approaches.
- failure to convince project-design engineers that standardization brings benefits that more than compensate for limited design choice.
HOW TO ACHIEVE STANDARDISATION: Oil and Gas industry must move towards standardization. It's not nice to have things anymore, rather a must-have thing. Some ways we can approach standardization is
- Reduce the Bespoke component of each project, by increasing the carbon copy approach for every project. This increases the standardization of modules after every project including drawings and documents.
- When it comes to standardized designs of offshore platforms, one design cannot fit all operating scenarios. Hence time and resources need to be invested to create multiple modular designs for varying operating conditions.
- Significant benefits in project cost and schedule can come from minimizing preferential engineering; by not re-writing equipment specifications on each project, costs and worktime are reduced.
- Investing time and resources to create E3D module designs for varying operating scenarios.
Conclusion:
The common objective for major oil and gas projects globally is to deliver safe and economically viable facilities, which start-up on time and stay up. Standardization has the potential to support this goal.
The success of the standardization initiative in the oil and gas industry will depend on how widely the developed specifications are used by companies globally. This is more of a culture change challenge than a technical one.
The time has come for Oil and Gas industry to adopt Standardisation and minimize wastage ( resource and cost).
FPSO Operations, Shutdown, Maintenance, Engineering, Project Management Competence
3yhow is possible especially on production facility, 1 field got high H2S, another high mercury, another high Co2, thats not even looking at production volume itself. It may applies on identical profile, am i right?
Technical Safety Engineer
3yHi Sashidhar, Good Article. Indeed, standardization reduces cost and time. It would be great if you highlight the limitations of standardization. At times it restricts engineers not to improve further.
Senior Mechanical Engineer (Rotating/Package)
3yFast forward is a good concept by sbm for fpso’s but you could only standardise a few modules having all the constraints you’ve mentioned, I guess, we need more participants from across the sectors and involve clients as well. It’s not entirely impossible. By the way Sashi good write up and very insightful.
I HELP UPSTREAM OIL AND GAS COMPANIES WITH EFFECTIVE ENGINEERING STRATEGY: ENGINEERING MANAGER: PROJECT MANAGEMENT:
3yKrishna Padhy
Process Design
3yDear Shashidhar Bhat, standardization has been on going for long. Unfortunately with the exception of a few companies the standardization process comes to a standstill after the initial issue and a couple of revisions. Even the American Petroleum Institute (API) the torch bearer of standards has delayed its revisions, in some cases, the duration of the next edition stretching to 6 years. Another issue with the API commitee is that they have continued to publish leagcy design practices in the newer revisions which aren't of any value today. I had been involved in preparation of standards for ADNOC offshore back in 2008 and know that it is really a tough task. The standards I had prepared related to a)Process Design Criteria b)Vent and Depressurization Systems c)Drain Systems & d) Sampling systems. All these standards were with a focus on the oil & gas industry, specifically the offshore industry.