Deal With Start-Up and Commissioning Threats and Challeges at an Early Stage of the Project for a Sucessful Handover and Project Completion

Abstract

Abstract The normal practice in the oil & gas industry is to implement major projects through Project Management Team by engaging external contractors. The operations team is involved only for specific activities and mostly during commissioning and start-up. Qatar Petroleum involved Operations team from the early stages in two of its major projects implemented in Dukhan fields and experienced successful implementation of the projects by meeting the project schedule and cost, smooth handover of the facility and achieved the intended objectives with adequate safety and operational flexibility. QP-Dukhan's Operations team played a major role in providing clarity and coherence of project objectives among various divisions and geographically diverse contractors. Operations contributed immensely in many aspects such as provided site specific data to tailor the design to suit site conditions, identification and mitigation of operations risks at design stage, reviewed the design to achieve targeted production, product quality, adequacy of safety systems, met environmental regulations, ensured operational flexibility, dealt with interface issues, ensured operation and maintenance philosophy to suit Dukhan conditions, utilized synergy with exiting facilities, incorporated past experiences in design and provided site coordination. Involving Operations early helped us to capture many issues in the early stages of the project. These were successfully incorporated in the design. This resulted in minimal re-design and re-engineering and helped us to firm up the scope of EPIC contractor and avoid project delay and cost over-run. Moreover, commissioning and hand-over was very smooth and plant reached its design throughput without major startup problems and delays. The projects met their design objectives with adequate safety, integrity and operational flexibility and integrated very well with other facilities in Dukhan. This successful experience led QP to create a new division within the Dukhan Operations, dedicated to coordinating continuously all other projects.