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Introduction

Asset Performance Management (APM)

Background

INTegrating two distinct and highly complex companies is no easy feat, but with visionary leadership, dedicated teams, and leading-edge software, anything is possible.

The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic, SOCAR, is a 100% state-owned national oil and gas company headquartered in Baku, Azerbaijan. SOCAR initiated its business operations in Turkey upon acquisition of 51 percent of the shares of Petkim from the Privatization Administration in 2008. Upon completion of all ongoing projects of SOCAR Turkey , the total value of its investments in the region will reach up to 19.5 billion US Dollars. SOCAR Turkey encompasses the best-in-breed companies such as Petkim, TANAP, STAR Refinery, SOCAR Terminal, Petkim RES (Wind Power Plant), Bursagaz, Kayserigaz, Enervis, SOCAR Enerji Ticaret, Millenicom and SOCAR Depolama.

SOCAR Turkey wanted to implement a best practice Asset Performance Management system at two of its sites in İzmir that, while vertically integrated, had very different strategies, systems and ways of working.

Petkim is a brownfield petrochemical plant with more than 30 years in operation, while STAR Refinery (SOCAR Turkey Aegean Refinery), a greenfield oil refinery, began operating in 2019. STAR Refinery sells naphtha to Petkim. The liquid hydrocarbon material is used to manufacture petrochemical products for a wide range of industries.

Integrating the two meant bringing together separate teams from different organizations to work together under a single project plan.

Challenge

Based on SOCAR Turkey’s requirements and business objectives, the company selected a combination of the GE Digital Asset Performance Management solution, and system integrator Stork’s world class functional asset management expertise, as the best combination to position SOCAR Turkey for long-term success and sustainability.

Teams from GE Digital and Stork worked closely with crews at Petkim and STAR Refinery to implement GE Digital’s full suite of APM software to support the implementation of best practice reliability, integrity and safety methodologies across both sites. The solution was deployed over two phases in 2019.

One of the main areas of focus was the APM Integrity solution, part of the GE Digital APM suite of solutions. This includes:

Risk-Based Inspection (RBI 580 & RBI 581)
Inspection Management
Thickness Monitoring
Asset Health Management

SOCAR Turkey knew that implementing Risk-Based Inspection (RBI) in a proper way would give it the ability to optimize inspection plans, including scopes of work and required inspection intervals. While the inspection scope for some components will be more detailed and focused to detect the potential degradation mechanisms, other inspections could have their intervals extended, and less rigorous scopes as per the calculated risk from RBI.

In order to establish and maintain an inspection program that yields the highest probability of detecting potential damage, SOCAR Turkey also needed visibility into emerging risk via process or operating conditions and their effect on potential damage mechanisms. These are commonly referred to as integrity operating windows (IOWs).

Solution

STAR Refinery and Petkim utilized the GE Digital APM RBI capabilities to justify, through risk calculations, that more rigorous inspections with less frequency successfully lower Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) risks. This enabled them to extend the mandatory inspections period. Ancillary benefits of the approach included:

Ability to more effectively manage inspection costs by shifting resources to higher risk areas, as well as identifying items that can be inspected non-intrusively on-stream instead of intrusive internal inspections.
Inspection intervals more aligned with turnaround intervals.
Inspection findings targeted towards specific damage mechanisms defined via corrosion study–to assess and incorporate inspection confidence levels into re-analysis of risk when RBI studies are evergreened.