Aging and mature oil and gas assets may pose serious problems when it comes to ensure integrity of Process and Operations. Depending on age, repair history, deterioration (even not necessarily associated with time), and all the other factors that influence the beginning, evolution and mitigation of its degradation many equipment may be out of compliance with Safety standards or with original manufacturer’s specification. This may result in an increasing likelihood of failure and urge the company to make a partial or total refurbishment of the plant to prevent Major Accident Hazards.

It is therefore apparent that management of equipment integrity especially in old facilities requires an effective Process Safety Management approach that can support at managerial level the decisions and the actions that need to be under taken with respect to the asset itself: the alternatives can consist in elaborating dedicated studies to justify continued service, re-rating, fix, refurbish or scrapping the equipment.

This paper describes how integrity issues related to old facilities in Congo have been managed in the framework of the Company Process Safety Management System through the application of BART (Base line risk Assessment tool) BART is a Process Safety risk management tool supported by dedicated software that combines a simplified quantitative risk assessment (QRA) with a bow-tie model a to identify and assess any potential hazards and associated risks, that may arise from process activities in onshore and offshore oil & gas installations.

In the aging assets in Congo, the application of BART has provided a clear picture of the risk level of the plant: the need for some actions already included in the HSE risk register has been confirmed and further recommendations to improve the overall safety of the installations (in addition to those already implemented or foreseen) have been suggested.

In the overall, this application has once again confirmed the soundness of BART methodology and its important role as a tool for assurance and verification within the Company Process Safety Management y framework.

Keywords:
process safety, frequency, safety risk management, risk assessment, functional unit, refurbishment, application, recommendation, recovery barrier, reliability
Subjects:
HSSE & Social Responsibility Management, Safety, Risk Management and Decision-Making, HSSE management systems, Process safety, Safety risk management, Risk, uncertainty, and risk assessment
Copyright 2014, Society of Petroleum Engineers
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