Oil companies to address criticality of maintenance

All oil and gas exploration and processing projects should be supported with a tailored strategy and execution for their maintenance and inspection. These are typically big support activities covering all equipment and their sub-assemblies. Faced with the resulting impact of high salinity in the Gulf of Kuwait and heavy oil production, Kuwait is home to many of the world's most reputed experts in this field covering an array of equipment maintenance activities. The national and international oil companies and oil service providers and associations in Kuwait are known to have consistently researched and developed state-of-the-art inspection, monitoring and maintenance programs to sustain the quality and performance of critical equipment in both the upstream and downstream segments. At the same time, experts from Kuwait would like to learn about different maintenance strategies and best practices by leading GCC and global operators. Controlling costs and yet having top class proactive and reactive maintenance strategies and technologies is the need of the hour.

Gianluigi Conti, Head of Maintenance, ENI adds, "In a brownfield the biggest challenge is assigning priorities while the vast majority of your resources are busy full time, fire fighting all failures that arise so that the biggest challenge is assigning priorities to the critical items identifying those to start with. After this you shall face the usual challenges like finding technical documentation and spares but this is another story."

Kuwait Oil Company, ENI, PDO, ADMA-OPCO, GUPCO, ADCO, Anadarko Petroleum and many more companies would be showcasing their technological innovations in identifying critical equipment and maintenance related activities. One of the world's finest industrial maintenance trainers Guillermo Ignacio Velasco would be conducting workshops related to risk management in maintenance as well as training a few engineers on the different aspects of business continuity planning of maintenance.

Especially after the Al-Rawdatain incident in North Kuwait last year, companies and top management have re-assessed the need of effective maintenance programs for rotating and static equipment like pumps, compressors, turbines, shafts and other day-to-day tools to reduce downtime which remains the biggest challenge to overcome for the Kuwaitis.