Around 40% of offshore oil and gas maintenance work fulfilled by Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel operators is “unnecessary”, according to a UK energy consultancy firm.
Lloyd’s Register (LR), a London-headquartered technical services and businesses services group, claim that operators could save up to £600,000 per year on each vessel if they cut “unwarranted” FPSO man hours – a saving of £15 million per asset.
Using new asset performance software, LR said that on FPSO operators could be spending up to 500 man hours on activity that fails to reduce the risk of failure or preserve facility uptime.
Victor Borges, Lloyd’s Register’s expert on FPSO maintenance optimisation, said: “There is a perception that implementing the methodologies that can actually help optimise maintenance activities is time consuming, complex, cumbersome and costly.
“This attitude, however, only drives a vicious circle of tackling small issues, instead of designing a systematic, informed and optimised maintenance strategy.
“The approach would see operators save significant time and money longer-term.”
LR claim the findings identify “room for improvement” in the way maintenance is planned and highlights the need for a “consistent strategy across equipment groups, systems and production units”.
Mr Borges added: “To break the cycle of ‘firefighting’, operators need to adopt a risk-based approach to maintenance, allowing them to cut unnecessary spend, free up resources and reduce the maintenance backlog.
“By understanding the balance between the cost of failure and the cost of maintenance, operators can focus the right resources on the right equipment at the right time.”
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