ASSET PERFORMANCE STRATEGIES
The State of Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Total annual production from this Western Arabian country is 77 million tons per year, which is produced by RasGas Company Limited (RasGas) and its sister company Qatargas. RasGas serves customers in South Korea, India, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Taiwan and the United States. A joint venture between Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil, RasGas operates seven LNG trains and produces approximately 37 million tons of LNG annually. Although its main product is LNG, other products such as sales gas, helium, sulphur and condensate maximizes its revenues. Sales gas is also transported by pipeline and sold to state-owned utilities within Qatar. Most modern companies recognize the benefits of improved plant reliability and the elements needed to achieve it. These include risk-based equipment maintenance strategies and spare-parts optimization. RasGas is no exception. But timeand cost-related issues often foil company efforts to make these elements a permanent part of their culture. For such organizations, the question is not how to convince management of the importance of plant reliability, but how to get there. As RasGas and
others have learned, the answer includes the use of an integrated asset-management strategy. As its name implies, the key aspect of integrated asset management is to integrate all reliability elements, then formulate processes and procedures to keep maintenance strategies evergreen. This model helps keep an organization focused on the elements that are important to achieving high plant reliability. Based on RasGas’ experience, it can take several years before an integrated asset-management model is fully established and starts delivering results (see Fig. 1). Company size and number of personnel will impact this. Before a journey toward an integrated reliability strategy can begin, three main foundations must be in place: A correctly configured CMMS. It should include a structured functional location hierarchy, such as ISO14224 and consistent nomenclature. A risk-based maintenance strategy for all equipment. This can be simple or complex, but must be defined. Spare-parts availability. Spare parts must be on-site in the right quantity and quality, accompanied by the correct technical and purchase information.
Fig. 1. RasGas’ integrated assetmanagement model
FEBRUARY 2014
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