Petrolytics: saving asset owners time and money, United Kingdom

Controlled intervention prevents asset trip

In an operational environment, equipment failure can lead to significant financial loss. Simple things like a pump failure, can trip an oil and gas platform and stop operations for 8-12 hours. 

Delivery in action

On one North Sea asset, repeat insights gained through Petrolytics identified a progressive issue with the shaft mechanical seal on a pump. Actions were raised to maintain short term operation and the asset team used Petrolytics to monitor in real time progressive failure behaviours and plan for a controlled changeout.

Value 

Without Petrolytics the pump seal would have failed, tripping the platform, and leading to production losses of around 16,000 BoE. Petrolytics fully mitigated the risk and associated financial impact of approximately $720,000.

Good vibrations: early insights save $1.5m in downtime

Vibration influences the durability and reliability of machinery systems or structures. Whilst standard equipment is often fitted with alarms and trips to avoid elevated levels, these generally come into effect only when vibration exceeds the maximum limit. By then it’s too late.

• Delivery in action

Following return of export compressor train B to operational use following planned maintenance, Petrolytics reported gas producer and gear box vibration. Although within the acceptable tolerance levels of the equipment’s pre-set alarms, over a period of days Petrolytics insights showed an upward trend of vibration, pointing to a future trip.

• Value

Engine A had been taken offline for changeout, meaning had B gone down, production on our client’s asset would stop. Early indication of the vibrations on B allowed the asset team to proactively manage power turbine speed, manage the supply of support and equipment from the vendor, and mitigate an outage.

In this scenario an EGC trip take around 7 days to rectify, at an overall cost of $1,445,451.

Intelligent insights avoid over-maintenance

Traditional maintenance regimes are time based, and generally conservative. Petrolytics forecasts equipment health, supporting asset owners to avoid maintenance-induced failures.

• Delivery in action

Prior to their use of Petrolytics, Sea water lift pump (SWLP) failure had been the single largest cause of production loss on our client’s floating production facility.

In 2019 Petrolytics generated insights relating to high temperatures on the SWLP Bearings. The system identified that the increased temperature correlated with a routine regreasing procedure.

• Value

Following further investigation, our client was able to change the type of grease being used, reduce the frequency of greasing, and manage the greasing activity better, mitigating SWLP failure and the resulting production losses.

Under normal operations a SWLP failure would have limited impact, but several associated failures on this asset meant it had been running without built in redundancy and therefore the risk to loss of production equated to a loss of 45% in production each day (6,857 BoE or $342,850)

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