Obsolescence management for offshore oil and gas production facility life extension

Abstract

The extension of the service life of offshore oil and gas production facilities has been an object of increased interest because of its benefits. In previous work, the authors proposed a guideline for managing the life extension process of oil and gas facilities, however without integrating obsolescence management. The main objective of the present study consists of develop a framework to guide the evaluation and management of asset obsolescence in the context of life extension, considering the concept of obsolescence as having four types of drivers - unavailability from manufacturers, new requirements or demands, technological or technical changes, and new conditions or needs. A framework with six stages of obsolescence management process was proposed and validated with a case study. Because no single request submitted to the Brazilian oil and gas regulator of a facility considering life extension had complete information to perform the obsolescence evaluation, a hypothetical case study was developed with a combination of information from real offshore production facilities. Results demonstrate that the framework: (i)transforms the assessment and management of obsolescence into a systematic process that identifies priority impacted elements and, (ii)based on the risks associated with their obsolescence, supports the definition of the most appropriate decision.