FPSO operators could save £15 million per asset on maintenance
Lloyd's Register (LR), the specialist energy consultancy, has released new findings revealing as much as 40% of maintenance work carried out by Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel operators is unnecessary. By reducing these unwarranted manhours, operators could save on average almost £600,000 per asset each year, which is equivalent to £15m over an assets' life.
By applying a risk-based maintenance approach using its Asset Performance Maintenance software, AllAssets™, LR found that on average, FPSO operators could be spending 500 manhours per specific equipment group (such as an electric motor supporting a compressor or a centrifugal pump) on maintenance activity that fails to reduce the risk of failure or preserve facility uptime.
The findings have identified room for improvement in the way maintenance is planned, highlighting the need for a consistent strategy across equipment groups, systems and production units. They identified that relying purely on Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) guidelines meant that operators were unable to qualify whether maintenance activities were essential, demonstrating that OEM guidelines also don't take into consideration the ever-changing nature of offshore operations.
As a result of this approach, there is an increased risk of failure as a backlog of maintenance is generated, increasing spend and inappropriately targeting resources.
LR is a world leader in the design and implementation of systematic, best-in-class maintenance strategies using preconfigured industry standard models. Through its asset performance management platform, AllAssets™, LR delivers the insights operators need to validate or optimise maintenance strategies, allowing them to tune maintenance intervals with real operating conditions. This results in the eradication of unnecessary maintenance, reducing costs and improving efficiency across their operations.
LR conducted analysis specifically focusing on FPSO projects. These projects allowed LR to deliver an optimisation of around 40% on maintenance activities. Across these optimisation projects, we have on average identified yearly savings of £23,000 per asset group. An asset group is a group of equipment items of the same type such as an electric motor supporting a compressor or a centrifugal pump.
LR has optimised 26 different asset groups made up of common equipment items in FPSOs, and if all the 26 asset groups are optimised, LR can deliver yearly savings of £23,000 per asset, and an overall saving of nearly £600,000 (£598,000) annually. Over 25 years asset life, this equates to savings of close to £15 million. The optimisation value depends on a number of factors such as frequency of maintenance activities, duration, cost for the different resources etc. Therefore, some asset groups will have higher financial impact.
