AllAfrica.com: Shell Targets 95% Improvement in Gas Compressor Performance
Hector Igbikiowubo
Vanguard (Lagos)
July 6, 2004
Posted 7 June 04
SHELL Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) has initiated a campaign to raise the performance of its gas compressors from 70 per cent to 95 per cent to ensure that the company meets its gas supplies requirement to Trains 4 &5, as well as meet the 2008 gas flares down target.
The company has also begun the process of rationalising the number of computer software being used for subsurface data evaluation and reservoir modeling. This was contained in a recent edition of the Shell Bulletin, an house journal of the company in Nigeria , released in Lagos last week.
The company's 33 compressors compress and transmit associated gas from gas gathering centres to nodes where it is exported or used for domestic electricity generation. Corporate Maintenance man Alexander Lundie said: "It is vital that these facilities work steady and the aim of the improvement campaign is to ensure that their performance is increased from the present low performance to at least 95%."
The campaign began with an audit of compressor performance in 2003 which was conducted at the beginning of 2004.
It showed that the average compressor uptime for the 12 months was 70% against a target of 95%. In February this year, tactical teams were set up to handle underlying causes to sustain compressor availability in the long run spare parts, maintenance, condition monitoring training and competence as well as contracts.
At the same time, the Corporate Maintenance department is working hand in hand with the different asset teams to address "hardware problems and return compressor equipment to A1 condition. Mr. Ken Brown, the Discipline Head, Mechanical Maintenance who oversees the tactical teams said:
"We are currently carrying out site surveys to assess the condition of compressors and determine the work scope to get them back to optimum condition.
"We will then prioritise and assign work to areas teams, specialist vendors or engineering as the case may be, and plan, schedule and execute by the end of this year or early 2005. We believe results will begin to show in the first uarter of next year."
The bulletin also disclosed that the computer rationalisation exercise aims to reduce the total number of software applications from over 400 to less than 100, and migrate related data.
In addition to huge cost savings in software delivery and maintenance costs, it will also enable the SPDC deploy the common Shell operating environment.
This will help to harmonise "islands of subsurface information," simplify use of applications and enable users to leverage new technology developments globally.
The company has also taken the lead role with the kick-off in January this year, of the GeoFrame-to-OpenWorks data migration project.
The project team is led by Tonie Akano, Head Subsurface IT Portfolio (Support and Maintenance), West. Other members are Yemi Ladeji, Omu Ugborugbo, Cynthia Umeh, Ukpai Kalu, Nina Ikechimkpa and Sulaiman Idowu.
Another team of 10 from Landmark Graphics led by Charles Ekwedike is providing onsite technical services needed for this migration.
The project team began by mapping out applications and identifying the ones to be "stepped out" or harmonised and as the application migration is taking place, users are undergoing training to acquaint themselves with the new tools. Some 93 users have already been trained.
"We are happy that the asset owners are actively supporting us. This is important because they will be responsible for final quality checks and confirmation of migrated projects, and the business will be sure that all project data are completely and correctly taken to the new platform," Tonie explained.
It is expected that the migration of applications, databases and data will be completed by the end of the year.
The final migration to the Africa Regional computing centre in Port Harcourt which is being implemented, will be completed by the middle of next year, paving the way for other OUs in the region, Shell Gabon and Shell Cameroon as well as SNEPCO, to take their own applications and data into the new environment.
"The benefits of a centralised and standardised application are tremendous. For example, exploration, development, and production teams will find it much easier to tap into best practices and apply them to getting oil out in faster time, with the use of common applications," Tonie added.