Page 50: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Jan/Feb 2016)

49 51

Asset integrity

AUTOMATION from the start

Greg Hale takes a look at how Shell integrated an asset integrity program into its new Prelude FLNG project with the intent of saving millions over the next 20-25 years.

hinking ahead and integrating an With the industry in a tailspin and the start designing the projects to take asset integrity program from the pro? ts running tight these days, opera- advantage of smart instrumentation

T beginning will save Shell mil- tors need to squeeze and pull as much and the diagnostics that come with lions of dollars with its Prelude Floating out of systems and that is where asset them,” Hokeness said. “Shell has taken lique? ed natural gas (FLNG) project over integrity shines. the strongest stance I have seen where

De? nitions of asset integrity abound, the next 20-25 years. they have designed their maintenance but essentially it is the ability of an asset “Shell has been thinking about it exclusively around the smart instru- to perform its required function effective- from the beginning,” said Scott Hoke- mentation and the diagnostics that come ly and ef? ciently while protecting health, ness, business development manager at with them. Traditionally many plants safety and the environment when required

Emerson Process Management. “They will run to failure and then schedule over the entire lifecycle of the asset.

realized they will have a limited staff maintenance.” on the ship. From the start, they knew “The most common view of asset “Without a doubt, if you can ? x they would be monitoring assets from integrity is getting good values from (equipment) before it fails you don’t onshore and supporting a skeleton team the device as it is working with control incur the cost of downtime for the pro- on the ship with information on what strategies and process monitoring,” cess. If you can schedule work during repairs are needed and what the priori- Hokeness said. turnarounds or scheduled downtime, ties are. They had this in mind from the What makes the Shell project inter- that is far more cost effective than hav- start, so as they are con? guring their esting from an asset integrity point of ing to shut the process down to repair smart devices, they are very careful to view is the oil and gas giant is incorpo- it,” Hokeness said.

set up their alerts from the get go, so rating it in from the beginning and not

Prelude to a ? oating plant when the ship goes on station, they will just bolting it on.

be ready to monitor it from shore.” “More and more we see (users) from Once it is up and running, the Prelude

January 2016 | OE oedigital.com 52 052_OE0116_Automation.indd 52 12/24/15 9:15 AM