Operating and maintenance

The field development plan s prime purpose is to serve as a conceptual project specification for subsurface and surface facilities, and the operational and maintenance philosophy required to support a proposal for the required investments. It should give management and shareholders confidence that all aspects of the project have been... 

The first function of a wellsite is to accommodate drilling operations. However, a wellsite must be designed to allow access for future operations and maintenance activity, and in many cases provide containment in the event of accidental emission. Production from a single wellhead or wellhead cluster is routed by pipeline to a gathering station, often without any treatment. In such a case the pipeline effectively becomes an extension of the production tubing. If a well is producing naturally or with assistance from a down... 

The operations group will develop general operating and maintenance objectives for the facilities which will address product quality, costs, safety and environmental issues. At a more detailed level, the mode of operations and maintenance tor a particular project will be specified in the field development plan. Both specifications will be discussed in this section, which will focus on the input of the production operations and maintenance departments to a field development plan. The management of the field during the producing period is discussed in Section 14.0. 

The production operations and maintenance group will develop a set of operating and maintenance objectives for the project. This will be a guideline when specifying the mode of operation and maintenance of the equipment items and systems, and will incorporate elements of... 

An example of the operating and maintenance objectives for a project might include statements which cover technical, business and environmental principles, such as ... 

When estimating the operating and maintenance costs for various options, it is recommended that the actual activities which are anticipated are specified and costed. This will run into the detail of frequency and duration of maintenance activities such as inspection, overhaul, painting. This technique allows a much more realistic estimate of opex to be made, rather than relying on the traditional method of estimating opex based on a percentage of capex. The benefits of this activity based costing are further discussed in Section 13.0 and 14.0. 

It is worth noting that typically personnel and logistics represent 30% to 50% of operating costs while maintenance costs represent 20% to 40% of operating costs. These are particular areas in which cost control and reduction should be focused. This may mean reviewing the operations and maintenance philosophies discussed in Section 11.0, to check whether they are being applied, and whether they need to be updated. 

G. W. Gupton Jr., HHAC Controls, Operation and Maintenance, Fairmont Press, Lilbum, Ga., 1987. 

Equipment rehabiUty and freedom from operational and maintenance attention. 

V. E. Schoeck ia B. E. Kester, ed.. Proceedings, Specialty Conference on Design, Operation, and Maintenance of High Efficiemy Particulate Control Equipment, Air Pollution Control Association, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1973, pp. 103—117. 

L. Theodore and A. J. Bwomzox., Air Pollution Control Equipment—Selection, Design, Operation and Maintenance, Prentice-Hall, Englewood CHffs, N.J., 1982. 

A new countercurrent continuous centrifugal extractor developed in the former USSR (214) has the feature that mechanical seals are replaced by Hquid seals with the result that operation and maintenance are simplified the mechanical seals are an operating weak point in most centrifugal extractors. The operating units range between 400 and 1200 mm in diameter, and a capacity of 70 m /h has been reported in service. The extractors have been appHed in coke-oven refining (see Coal conversion processes), erythromycin production, lube oil refining, etc. 

Fuel costs are taken to be 1.00/GJ ( 1.05/MBtu) the escalation and interest rates are 6.5% and 10%, respectively and the factor used for calculating levelized fuel and operating and maintenance cost is 2.004. 

Size reduction (qv) or comminution is the first and very important step in the processing of most minerals (2,6,10,20—24). It also involves large expenditures for heavy equipment, energy, operation, and maintenance. Size reduction is necessary because the value minerals are intimately associated with gangue and need to be Hberated, and/or because most minerals processing/separation methods require the ore mass to be of certain size and/or shape. Size reduction is also required in the case of quarry products to produce material of controlled particle size (see Size measurement of particles). In some instances, hberation of valuables or impurities from the ore matrix is achieved without any apparent size reduction. Scmbbers and attritors used in the industrial minerals plants, eg, phosphate, mtile, glass sands, or clay, ate examples. 

In the early years of reactor development, electricity from nuclear sources was expected to be much cheaper than that from other sources. Whereas nuclear fuel cost is low, the operating and maintenance costs of a nuclear faciHty are high. Thus on average, electric power from coal and nuclear costs about the same. 

Operation and Maintenance. Engineering and constmction firms can be contracted to take charge of treatment-plant operation and maintenance and manage other aspects necessary to meet performance goals, such as hiring and cost controls (7). Costs to the municipalities are reported to be competitive with the more traditional approach of management by municipal employees (8). 

Laboratory equipment Construction, operation, and maintenance of temporary sheds, offices. 

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