Maintenance Integrity: Managing Flange Inspections on Aging Offshore Production Facilities Available to Purchase

The flange inspection associated with piping on offshore production facilities is a time-consuming activity as the flanges should physically be opened in order to perform close visual inspections. In order to sustain maintenance integrity, a number of inspections are allocated for a subsystem based on factors such as: condition of the medium flowing in the line, risk perception of the pipeline system, and the date of installation. Inspection teams recommend inspections based on the data, experience, and exposure to offshore production facilities, as well as the intuition and intentions of those individuals involved with inspection planning and with carrying out implementation during the preventive maintenance shutdowns. However, there is a tendency for the operating company representatives to raise queries with the contractor company representatives about the number of flanges to be opened during the preventive maintenance shutdown as flange inspection consumes a considerable portion of time and resources. Hence, it is vital to interpret sensibly the importance of recommending close visual inspections for flanges if the maintenance integrity is to be sustained. This study focuses on analyzing the historical data limited to flanges on flowlines over the last fifteen years. The final results provide a snapshot of the present status of the flanges of the production facility.