Management of OSBRA Project Portfolio: Learned Lessons After Several Cases and Many Years of Experience Available to Purchase

OSBRA is a 20^″ multiproduct pipeline operated by TRANSPETRO that supplies Diesel oil, gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from REPLAN, the Brazilian major refinery, to five Tank Farms located along the country Midwestern region. In 2001, five years after OSBRA first commissioning, TRANSPETRO initiated several projects to improve the pipeline and Tank Farms operational performance on quality, measurement, safety and environmental care. A project portfolio management system was established in order to keep control of projects conducted along the 964 kilometers of pipeline, its Tank Farms and two unmanned pump stations. Learned lessons and good practices were adopted from typical project management cases on the pipeline industry, such as: tank drainage, effluents and fire protection systems; improvements on pipeline measurement and control systems; improvements on pipeline leak detection system; tank construction; short length pipelines construction; truck loading and unloading terminal facilities; jet fuel receiving, storage and delivering system; technology developing projects and so on. Some of these projects were conducted based on PETROBRAS traditional experience on project management, some were conducted according to the Independent Project Analysis Institute - IPA and the best recommended practices from the PMI’s PMBOK® Guide, and others were conducted considering a mix of both practices. During the project, the members of the project team and its stakeholders were geographically spread out through several sites. This paper presents how the OSBRA project portfolio has been managed by a reduced multi-disciplinary team, including safety and environmental professionals, in order to keep each project aligned to meet its essential operational and business objectives.