Oil and Gas Industry Equipment Reliability

Billions of dollars are spent globally every year to construct/manufacture, operate, and maintain various types of equipment/systems for the oil and gas industry. Reliability of equipment used in the oil and gas industrial sector has become an important issue due to various types of equipment reliability-related problems over the years. For example, corrosion-related failures including maintenance, direct cost in the U.S. petroleum industry alone was 3.7 billion per year in 1996 [1,2]. 

This chapter presents various important aspects of oil and gas industry equipment reliability. 

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Chapter 9 presents various important aspects of oil and gas industry accident data and accident data analysis. Some of the topics covered in this chapter are oil and gas industry accident databases, onshore and offshore oil and gas industry accident data analysis, and offshore oil and gas rigs accident analysis. Chapter 10 is devoted to oil and gas industry equipment reliability and covers topics such as oil and gas pipeline fault tree analysis, corrosion-related failures, optical connector failures, and fatigue damage initiation assessment in oil and gas steel pipes. 

Designing, constructing, operating, and maintaining offshore oil and gas industry equipment and systems can sometimes result in accidents, injuries, and other serious problems. Safety and Reliability in the Oil and Gas Industry A Practical Approach focuses on oil and gas... 

Isaksen, S., Anbalagan, A., A study of factors which influence the failure rate of equipment in the oil and gas industry. Proceedings of the European Safety and Reliability Annual Conference, 2010, pp. 57-64. 

ABSTRACT The determination of loads from accidental fires with realistic accuracy in the oil gas industry offshore and petrochemical industry onshore is important for the prediction of exposure of persoimel, equipment and structures to the fires. Standards, Codes of Practice and other similar publications refer to thermal loading from jet fires from 100 to 400kW/m and from 50 to 250kW/m for pool fires. The application of inappropriate fire loads may lead to incorrect predictions of fatalities, explosion of pressure vessels and collapse of structures. Further uncertainties are associated with heat transfer from the flame to pressure equipment and strucmres, and their behaviour when affected by accidental fires. The Paper presents results of a review of fire models from various Standards and Codes of Practice, and data obtained from full scale tests. A parametric study of the various methods used in the industry is presented. A simulation-based reliability assessment (SBRA) method has been applied to quantify potential accuracy range and its consequences to fire effects on structures. 

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