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The management of aging of plants has become an important issue for oil and gas (O&G) companies that intend to extend the lifetime of their facilities. Important requirements are that the installations must be safe and economical to remain in operation. This can be achieved by implementing aging plant management programs to control and mitigate the degradation of the facilities. Aging plants have been a crucial topic for several years within the nuclear power industry, but it is a relatively novel area for the offshore O&G industry. To develop a successful aging plant management program for an existing offshore O&G installation, it is necessary not only to learn from the experience of other industries but also to understand and address the specific challenges for managing the aging of these facilities. The objective of this article is to outline these issues and to highlight future challenges. © 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 2011

Oil companies and relevant institutions are becoming increasingly aware that effective measures must be put in place to extend the life of installations that are approaching, or have passed, the end of their design lifetime. The implementation of ageing management (AM) facilitates ensuring that the degradation of the installations is properly controlled and mitigated, and their integrity is maintained during the life extension. Integrating AM within an existing process such as maintenance management, which shares various goals and objectives with AM, seems to have several advantages over the alternative of creating a new process for AM. A key issue is to identify and optimize the changes in the maintenance management process for addressing and managing ageing. This paper reports on the use of a systems engineering approach and information models for identifying the “as is” and “to be” processes of existing maintenance management of an oil and gas facility in order to fulfill the new requirements for AM. The primary contribution of this report is to demonstrate the power of these models, combined with a systems engineering process, to reverse engineer legacy practices as the basis for introducing new processes, procedures and training. ©2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 16:

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Assessing the technical condition and remaining useful life of aging equipment is crucial for the life extension of O&G facilities. In order to perform a reliable assessment, models describing the degradation of the equipment are necessary. However, the use of accurate physical models for this purpose may be challenging. Some reasons are that the equipment can be exposed to various degradation mechanisms, which may be influenced by different operating conditions, and that the operational data may be scarce. This paper presents a systematic approach for modelling different degradation mechanisms, assessing the technical condition of a component, and quantifying the expected remaining useful life. The quantification is performed using a Bayesian network. Finally, the application of the proposed model is illustrated with the analysis of a fire water pump.