Developing Maintenance Optimization Model to Manage Oil and Gas Equipment: A Case Study

Maintenance optimization models are mathematical models whose aim is to find the optimal balance between the costs and benefits of maintenance, while taking all kinds of constraints into account. Oil and gas equipment will be managed efficiently if models for predicting maintenance intervals existed. This research presents a solution to this problem; where, with information such as cost and life span of oil and gas equipment, the maintenance interval can be predicted. The aim of the research was to develop maintenance model that will be used to effectively manage oil and gas equipment. The following equipment were considered for this paper: High pressure compressor, Electric generator (1000kva), and Pressure relief valve. The research relied mainly on data sourced from maintenance log book of oil and gas companies operating offshore, Offshore Reliability Data Handbook (OREDA), textbooks, journals, the internet and interviews of maintenance professionals. Markov models were applied to obtain the different state probabilities at various maintenance intervals and the graph of maintenance intervals against the operational unavailability for the selected oil and gas equipment were plotted to obtain the optimum maintenance interval for each equipment.