Approaching the Superior Management of Explosion Protection Equipment in Mature Field's Hazardous Area

Abstract

Abstract With reference to international standard, IEC 60079-17, each piece of explosion protection equipment shall have their integrity ensured by an initial detailed inspection, and then is to be maintained by periodic inspections at specific times within a 3-year interval. In the Gulf of Thailand, teams at PTTEP's offshore mature fields put high efforts into performing inspections for more than 200,000 units of Ex protected equipment in accordance with the international standards. However, they are constrained by various factors of the offshore nature e.g. man power, person on board (POB), harsh environment, inspector competency and budget (from the oil price crisis). To optimize Ex protected equipment inspection, a risk based inspection (RBI) approach as per EI (Energy Institute) recommendation has been introduced since 2016. The end result of this approach would be significant improvement in terms of system integrity and cost effectiveness. Nevertheless, implementation of new approach in the mature fields is not just a simple plug (in) and play. Key constraints have been proactively identified e.g. lack of a Computerized RBI Ex Protection Equipment Management System, no procedure/ guideline, database incompleteness, etc. In response to implement successfully RBI Ex inspection, from early 2017, an implementation plan was rolled out to mitigate all issues, especially the computerized system, which is key enabler to RBI Ex inspection; the plan is in-house developed under responsibility of the corporate maintenance team and went go live by November 2017. This paper provides a description of PTTEP's key initial approaches to this Explosion Protection Equipment Management System, which consists the planning, development, implementation and then up to the improvement phase.