Effective Management of the HSE&S Aspects of a Major Plant Shutdown
Authors: Behie Stewart , Laczko Larry , Murtaza Junaid , Lied Steiner , Cooper Neil , Aulmann Nicholas , Al Rahbi Ali 
Published: January 2011

Dolphin Energy Limited (DEL) is a Gas processing and distribution organization that produces and exports 2.1 billion scfd of clean, pipeline specification gas to the UAE from Qatar. The export gas and byproducts are equivalent to 500,000 barrels of oil per day. The project took 7 years to complete from concept development and preliminary engineering to full operations. JGC was the EPC contractor for the onshore plant. The facilities include two offshore platforms each with 12 wells, two 80 km, 36 inch underwater supply pipelines from the platforms to the onshore plant, a major onshore sour gas processing plant, a 364km, underwater, export gas pipeline from Ras Laffan, Qatar to Taweelah, UAE where there are receiving facilities and a distribution pipeline/network.

The staged plant start-up began in June 2007 with the receipt of the first wet gas from the offshore facilities into Stream 1 and was largely completed 7 ½ months later in February 2009 when the plant exported 2.0 bscf for the first time. One of the requirements from the EPC contractor, JGC, before plant acceptance was to confirm that the equipment met the contractual warranty requirements. For this purpose, Dolphin planned and executed a comprehensive Warranty Shutdown (WS) of all of Stream 1 facilities and contracted Descon to carry out the work. The WS lasted a total of 30 days during which 115 vessels were opened and inspected and repairs / modifications made as required. The work involved about 915,000 hours with a peak workforce of 986 workers. A second shutdown (SD) took place in February 2010 to make modifications in parts of the plant that were not shutdown in the 2009 WS and to undertake some of the critical repairs identified during the previous year. This SD was contracted to Qcon and involved about 79,000 manhours and a peak workforce of 272 workers.

This paper will describe the preparation and management of the HSE&S aspects of the WS of the Stream 1 and the 2010 SD. The detailed preparation work that was developed to guide the main contractor for each SD will be described as will the details of the day-to-day execution of the work. A key component of this preparation work was the preparation of comprehensive Work Method Statements (WMS) and the completion of Task Risk Assessment (TRA's) for each WMS using DEL's rigorous TRA protocol. A total of 150 TRA's were completed for the WS and about 50 in total for the 2010 SD. The paper will describe the operation of the "war room" where daily updates of the work were discussed and the HSE issues addressed. The PTW planning and execution work is discussed as well as the robust manner in which all recommendations / mitigation measures generated by the TRA's were transferred to and acknowledged in the field as part of the work execution process. The paper will also discuss how the issues and concerns that came to light during the shutdowns were actively addressed and resolved in order to keep the focus on the execution of the work. DEL Field HSE&S staff oversaw the work and closely coordinated the management of the HSE&S aspects throughout the intense shutdown periods. The work for both SD's was completed without a Loss Time Injury (LTI) or a medical treatment case (MTC).