Reliability Analysis of Offshore Production Facilities Under Arctic Conditions Using Reliability Data From Other Areas

Abstract

The development of offshore energy resources involves highly complex and extensive technological processes. Reliability evaluation of offshore production facilities provides essential information in the design and operation phase. Historical reliability data play an important role in reliability analysis, and as such data reflect the effect of influencing factors that production facilities have experienced during their life cycle. Due to there being less offshore activity in the Arctic region compared with other areas, there is a lack of data and little experience available regarding operational equipment. In contrast to the Arctic region, oil and gas companies have a lot of experience and information related to the design and operation of offshore production facilities in the other parts of the world. Using this type of data and information, collected from similar systems but under different operational conditions, in design processes for the Arctic region may lead to incorrect design. This may increase health, safety, and environmental (HSE) risk or operating and maintenance costs. This paper develops a methodology for the application of the accelerated failure time model (AFT) to predict the reliability of equipment to be used in the Arctic region based on the available data. In the methodology used here, the available data is assumed to reflect the behavior of the equipment under low stress conditions, and using the AFT models the reliability of equipment in the Arctic environment, which represents high stress, is predicted. An illustrative example is used to demonstrate how the methodology can be applied in a real case.