A SEAMLESS
An effective asset management strategy
combines the needs of the production and
maintenance organisations. The result is
higher asset availability and significantly reduced
maintenance costs,
as Peter Damer, ABB, UK, explains.
T
he oil and gas industry’s process plants and pipelines are complex and consist of expensive,
production-critical equipment. In fact, the industry is one of the most asset and data
intensive with a US$ 150 million oil well at sea generating a terabyte of data per day.
Furthermore, the electrical, instrumentation, control and telecoms (EICT) systems are
becoming more powerful as the technology evolves. At the same time, their performance and
operational availability are critical for production consistency. Companies are under enormous
pressure to achieve higher returns on their capital assets in a safe and sustainable way. They need
to drive higher asset reliability, productivity and performance. Yet over time, the condition and
performance of this technology will degrade, which negatively impacts on production and the
associated costs.
Asset management strategies aim to counter this impact by systematic condition monitoring
of equipment. This avoids unplanned production downtime and reduces operational expenses by
optimising maintenance planning.
In oil and gas companies, there is often a disconnect between operations and asset management
systems and a lack of collaboration across operations, maintenance and engineering departments.
CONNECTION
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