WIRELINE AUTUMN 2014 ISSUE 29

NEWS ROUND-UP AGEING A D LIFE EXTE SION

HEALTH AND SAFETY

The Dunlin cluster of fields in the east Shetland basin, which Fairfield Energy acquired in 2008, have been the focus of a several hundred million pound programme of upgrades over the past six years. The impetus behind the work is rooted in a 2010 vulnerability study, which assessed every system on the platform and prioritised repair, replacement or upgrade

Breathe new life into offshore assets Managing the ageing and life extension of offshore installations is itself maturing into a sophisticated area of activity. Wireline talks to the teams at Fairfield Energy Limited and Nexen about a discipline closely attuned to the industry-wide drive for continuous improvements in safety and to prolong the UKContinental Shelf’s production life. A geing is a natural process for us all. So why not apply a similar forward thinking approach to the “The Health and Safety Executive’s recently completed strategic inspection programme examining the industry’s management of ageing and life extension (ALE), Key “Effective ALE management is fundamental to ensuring longer term asset safety and

maximising economic recovery. If you don’t think about it from the outset, it is possible your installation won’t be around for as long as you need it to be.” And as the industry seeks to maximise recovery, many installations will remain

life cycle of offshore platforms as we do towards the big decisions we inevitably make in our personal lives? For Ian Sharp of Fairfield Energy and Andy Robertson of Nexen, this is just plain common sense.

Programme 4, has re-affirmed that we have to think about ALE for our installations much earlier than we typically do,” says Ian, chief operating officer at Fairfield (see box-out on p17 for more on Key Programme 4).

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