Development of Maintenance Management Strategy Based on Reliability Centered Maintenance for Marginal Oilfield Production Facilities

Abstract

The present work adopted Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) methodology to evaluate marginal oilfield Early Production Facility (EPF) system to properly understand its functional failures and to develop an efficient maintenance strategy for the system. The outcome of the RCM conducted for a typical EPF within the Niger Delta zone of Nigeria provides an indication of equipment whose failure can significantly affect operations at the production facility. These include the steam generation unit and the wellhead choke assembly, using a risk-based failure Criticality Analysis. Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) was conducted for the identified critical equipment on a component basis. Each component of the equipment was analyzed to identify the failure modes, causes and the effect of the failure. The outcome of the FMEA analysis aided the development of a robust maintenance management strategy, which is based on an optimized mix of corrective, preventive and condition-based monitoring maintenance for the marginal oilfield EPF.