Risk-Based Inpsection and Condition-Based Maintenance

[Materials12345]

Dear Colleagues,

I would appreciate if you can share your experience in RBI and condition based maintenance. Why RBI is not as commonly used as condition based maintenance? Any technical challenges in the application of RBI?

Thanks,

Jonathan

 

[redpicker]

I am not sure this is relevant, but in case it helps you, consider the following.

The owner of an oil lease (Lease Owner, also known as the Well Operator, or just the Operator) is contracting to have a driller go into an existing well and drill a lateral. He requires that all pipe used be inspected within 30 days of the start of operations. This would be true if the driller was using brand new pipe, pipe that had been used for one job, inspected, then stored in covered storage for 3 months waiting for another job or just the driller's standard string that was coming from a previous job and needed a (condition based maintenance) inspection anyway. This is because the Operator considers the a failure of the pipe in the well is very high (in the worse case, it could mean abandoning the well and starting over). The Operator wants to mitigate this risk as much as possible so he requires every joint to be inspected prior to use, regardless of the prior history of the pipe.

The pipe belongs to the contractor. Sure, pipe failure is expensive for the contractor as it not only results in damaged equipment, but also increased cost of operations that are not likely covered by contract, so it means a loss to the contractor (sometimes a very large loss). However, if the contractor knew the pipe was in good condition, had been stored properly, and had been inspected just after it's last use, he would probably not inspect the pipe again prior to start of operations is not required. That is, the contractor would likely use a conditioned based inspection program, since as you have pointed out, it makes more sense.

So, in this case, the entity taking the risk is not the same as the entity responsible for the integrity of the material, so the operator makes the decision to require the inspection since the added cost of inspection is negligible to the level of risk.

I hope this helps.

rp