Significance and Potential Benefits of Bulk Material Standardization for Offshore Projects

Abstract

Oil and gas companies are focusing to solve the challenges of high-cost, high-risk and adverse market conditions in offshore production. These ongoing challenges and uncertainties with the fluctuating oil prices and increasing regulatory and safety requirements, have prompted oil and gas companies to explore ways to improve efficiency and productivity through standardization. Many of the offshore projects were analyzed before the launch of Unified Bulk Joint Industry Project (UBJIP) which has evolved in various phases. The main objective of the paper is to discuss the standard specification of Electrical and Instrument(E&I) components, Piping and Structure material. It is essential to state a defined significant purpose and benefit of the standardization work and assure that the actual efforts contribute to the overall savings. This paper focuses on the common specification in compliance with a cross-industry specification and includes details of the planning and execution of on-going standardization program. When standardizing, there are several considerations. The selection of bulk material is based on high-volume value and quality aspects which have significant impact when prioritizing among the components. The methodology adopted to develop the standard specifications of bulk items (for Electrical & Instrumentation, Piping and Structure) is identified by performing the gap analysis among local regulations, industry standards and major offshore project specifications. The developed standard specifications are based on evaluation and verification with prototype risk and business case studies. The findings of this paper cover the new standardization specification for cable glands, cable terminations and penetrations, pipe supports, flange management systems and outfitting. In some cases, the lack of international standards and codes in some areas was identified where the gaps were filled with the new UBJIP standard specifications. The significance and benefit criteria for standardization focuses on cost, weight, construction efficiency, compatibility, safety requirements and operational maintenance. The novel aspects of this paper address the challenges posed in design, materials, and procedures to meet a cross-industry specification, i.e. UBJIP IOSS (Integrated Offshore Standard Specification, soon to be incorporated into an ISO/IEC specification). The future steps and roadmap towards global standards are covered in this paper.