Rendering Mature Assets more HS&E Compliant through Improved Corrosion Management

Abstract

Abstract As offshore assets age they become more susceptible to hydrocarbon leaks and failures due to corrosion issues. Thus, they pose a greater threat progressively to the personnel's health and safety and also to the protection of the surrounding environment. An efficient way to reverse this trend is to create and implement an asset corrosion management strategy (asset CMS) which would simultaneously improve asset integrity and enhance plant uptime through reducing the number and severity of hydrocarbon leaks (due to corrosion), hence improving both personnel safety and environmental protection. Such an asset CMS would improve HS&E compliance (in particular in regard to the HSE's KP3 Report and its findings) onboard an offshore asset through pre-empting sections of the process systems before they can develop into a failure due to corrosion. This paper contains real data collected over a five-year period illustrating how the above has been achieved for an offshore asset in the North Sea through reducing the number and severity of hydrocarbon leaks over time, thus improving personnel safety and environment protection in particular and making the asset more HS&E compliant in general.