Development of a Reliability, Availability, Maintainability (RAM) simulation model for gas lift and gas injection system

In oil and gas industry, oil production will reduce over the time as oil fields become mature, causing depletion in reservoir pressure and less oil flow to the surface. When reservoir energy is insufficient to bring the oil flowing to the surface, it is essential to use an artificial lift as a primary oil recovery to maintain the reservoir pressure. After artificial lift have been applied to the reservoir, secondary recovery might be used as an initiative to increase the recovery of crude oil. Based on A significant failure occurred at a power plant in the USA in 1995 as a result of a turbine blading design fault. According to gas turbine technical report, surrounding auxiliary equipment was also damaged costing $11 million. One of the reasons is due to the operating conditions inside gas turbines that can damage the blades through particulates adhering the blades. Turbine blades are very sensitive, any damage can reduce mass flow and effective pressure ration. Therefore, it is crucial to identify which equipment/component in the system is the most critical and need to be paid attention. In this research, the Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) studies have been conducted as a solution to identify the equipment/component criticality. The purpose of the study is to assess the facility equipment design and its configuration system which focus on the Gas Lift and Gas Injection System. Besides, to identify and rank the systems/components that could be a major contributor to the production efficiency losses in the facility, and to evaluate the impact of modifications and changes to the base case. Reliability Block Diagram (RBD) has been created based on ISO 14224. The modelling is conducted using reliability-based analytical models on selected equipment configuration and assumptions. For this study, the calculation of analytical results was compared with other various cases and in order to improve the reliability of the system, the critical components that required as the capital spare can be identified.