RasGas Company Limited (RasGas) recently organised the second RasGas Reliability Forum on “reliability sustainment and improvement”.
The event was held on the RasGas premises in Ras Laffan, with the participation of shareholders Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil, in addition to representatives from Qatargas.
The forum, held under the patronage of RasGas chief executive officer Hamad Rashid al-Mohannadi, was attended by more than 125 delegates, including professionals, industry leaders and subject matter experts from various disciplines such as engineering, manufacturing, maintenance and projects.
The objective of the forum was to review core processes, systems and performances related to reliability with an emphasis on exploring improvement opportunities through open dialogue between all participants.
Over 20 presentations were delivered in the forum covering all aspects of reliability from equipment strategies, root cause failure analyses, surveillance, emergency response, longer shutdown intervals, reduced shutdown durations, ageing and obsolescence.
The forum provided an opportunity for RasGas and its shareholders to obtain comprehensive insights on the status of reliability improvement plans and issues through the dimensions of management processes, equipment and technology issues, people competencies and capabilities and to share best practices in this regard.
The forum facilitated leading-edge reliability management discussions focusing on sustaining and improving reliability as well as the significant progress since the last forum in 2013.
“Reliability is at the forefront of what we do as it safeguards RasGas’ reputation as a reliable supplier of liquefied natural gas,” said al-Mohannadi.
“There is always an opportunity to improve the way we manage our assets, with an eye to safe, reliable and efficient operations,” said Simon Younger, vice-president and joint interest manager for ExxonMobil Qatar. “We appreciate the efforts RasGas’ Operations Group has made to ensure the reliability and integrity of the company’s world-class assets and we will continue to support RasGas in ensuring that the right elements are in place for our long-term success.”
“The two-day forum was designed for open dialogue, sharing ideas, collectively learning and adopting leading-edge practices,” said Hamad Mubarak al-Muhannadi, RasGas chief operations officer.
The presentations in the forum highlighted root cause failure analyses insights, deeper understandings into previous incidents such as plant trips with a view to improve engineering systems, troubleshooting, emergency response, operations and maintenance procedures. Workout groups in the forum brainstormed best practices among various operators in the region and ExxonMobil global practices.
The participants commented that the key to reliability success was growing collective people skills and individual skills along with imbibing motivation from the peer groups. They also highlighted the importance of strong partnership between shareholders and affiliate companies.
The discussions in the forum also reiterated that cost optimisation should be achieved without compromising safety and reliability. It also suggested benchmarking the reliability achievements with a view to sharing best practices between operators.
Participants of the forum
