Inside this issue
Managing critical rotating equipment to optimise production
Reduce life cycle costs while enhancing the customer experience
"This issue focuses on Wood Group GTS, a leading independent provider of services and solutions for the power, oil & gas and renewable energy markets."
Allister Langlands
Chief Executive
Managing critical rotating equipment to optimise production
Industry-leading expertise and local knowledge reduce outage risk
Wood Group GTS aligns turbomachinery maintenance planning with facility-specific production requirements. The outage plan for Consorcio Camisea's remote Peruvian Amazon gas processing facilities included overhaul sequencing, loaner equipment and in-country field service support.
Wood Group GTS technicians prepare to test an overhauled Solar gas turbine.
Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) typically offer oil & gas companies aftermarket services that are limited to their specific equipment. Often this results in customers juggling multiple OEM support agreements to maintain a single system or process train.
Broad geographic distribution of customer assets, maturity of fields, aging equipment and availability of skilled resources pose added challenges to maintenance management.
Wood Group's solution focuses on the customers' primary need: optimising production.
"Our support services result from an unparalleled combination: Wood Group GTS, the leading independent provider of turbomachinery services, and Wood Group PSN, the world's leading brownfield services provider," explains Kimmo Fuller, vice president of Product Management for Wood Group GTS."
Wood Group GTS's capability has grown from its roots in oil & gas equipment maintenance. The breadth and depth of rotating equipment support extend well beyond that of our competitors.Our services span the full range of aftermarket support and apply to all major OEMs and classes of rotating equipment, from high-speed compressors to heavy-duty gas turbines.
"Together with Wood Group PSN, we offer customer-centric, production-aligned turbomachinery support that is vastly different from other suppliers," Kimmo said.
Wood Group PSN supports customers in optimising performance, maintaining production, reducing operating costs, providing assurance and extending the operating life of assets. With 26,000 employees in 35 countries, its distributed workforce understands local challenges and conditions.
"Our biggest value to customers is how we align maintenance planning with facility-specific production requirements. We do this by listening to our clients to understand their requirements and identify key operational issues," Kimmo continued.
In Peru, Wood Group GTS provided overhauls and outage management for eight Solar Centaur® SoLoNOx gas turbines in Consorcio Camisea's Malvinas and Pisco gas processing facilities. The US$6 million contract encompassed the delivery of turnkey programs for overhauls, logistics coordination, site services and engineering surveillance on the turbine generator packages.
"Because Wood Group is so involved in Peru through the local Wood Group PSN team – as in many other oil & gas regions – we have an in-depth understanding of the operational support requirements there," says Kimmo. "We also have a proven ability to deliver that support right to the client's doorstep, regardless of how challenging the location and environment may be. For Consorcio Camisea those challenges included dynamic gas production conditions, machinery import limitations and lengthy supply routes into the Peruvian Amazon."
Wood Group developed an outage plan that aligned with both facilities' operating profiles.Turbine run time and facility capacity vs production were key factors in sequencing overhauls to reduce production risk.
Equipment import limitations required the client to retain its own turbines so an exchange program was not an option. Therefore, Wood Group's plan included pre-building subassemblies, which shortened the overall cycle time by 20 per cent compared to that of the OEM, and providing a loaner turbine to keep the facilities online while each customer turbine was being overhauled.
Wood Group's team went even further to meet the customer's needs.
"Acknowledging the logistical challenges of working in remote areas of the environmentally sensitive Amazon region, we recommended a logistics company with Peruvian experience be used to ensure predictable and more efficient transport," Kimmo explained. "In addition, a knowledgeable, experienced Wood Group GTS field service representative was relocated to Peru, where he supported the Consorcio Camisea project and now provides ongoing support for rotating equipment customers in Peru."
Because this outage plan considered local production requirements, the customer perceived it as a unique offering.
"Wood Group GTS has proved themselves as a dependable service provider and we look forward to continuing to work with them and fostering a strong partnership," said Julio Cesar Ramirez, maintenance manager at Consorcio Camisea.
Carlos Lozano, general manager of Wood Group Peru, echoed the value of this approach in an interview with online magazine Focus Reports. "The 'act local, think global' approach is very much Wood Group's strategy and Peru is no exception to that. Wood Group has to customise the knowledge acquired overseas to the local environment."
That philosophy is also at work in Europe, where Wood Group GTS applied a production-centred maintenance approach to turbomachinery on seven gas platforms in the Dutch sector of the North Sea.
"The operator wanted to improve the overall performance of critical rotating equipment," Kimmo explained. "We recommended a simplified approach to maintenance of critical rotating equipment—21 gas turbines and 10 gas compressors—and focused on equipment most affecting day-to-day performance.
"The customer also was concerned about the need to recruit and retain the specialist skills needed for frontline operations and maintenance of the rotating assets.To overcome that problem we provided a dedicated offshore team of operations support engineers and based onshore personnel in their office."
The results speak for themselves.
| Key Results | Generation | Compression |
| Average availability | 98.72% | 96.12% |
| Average reliability | 99.36% | 97.55% |
In the US Gulf of Mexico, Wood Group GTS recently was asked to take on maintenance responsibilities for multiple Solar packages on offshore production platforms operated by a Wood Group PSN customer. Maintaining the pace of production, safely and efficiently, was most important.
Knowledgeable technical experts were dispatched to the platforms to rapidly conduct a series of condition assessments and deliver maintenance recommendations on their critical production equipment.
"Wood Group PSN was a strong customer advocate and worked closely with Wood Group GTS to ensure the best possible customer experience with minimal disruption to production.Thanks to the customer care and teamwork exhibited by Wood Group PSN, the Wood Group GTS team is in detailed discussions regarding a larger scope of maintenance responsibility with this first-time client," Kimmo explained.
Safety is the most critical aspect of this collaborative effort. One of the advantages of production support experience is the ability to apply that knowledge of offshore and onshore production facilities to required procedures and best practices.
Wood Group strives to exceed customer expectations by helping to drive continuous safety improvement through up-front planning of service requirements on every job and every market. This is combined with front-line leadership commitment, job safety analyses and asset integrity.
Wood Group GTS and Wood Group PSN also possess a shared focus on environmental efficiency, complementary strengths, and the means to deliver a production-centred approach to maintenance.They were recently chosen to conduct an engineering analysis of emissions reduction options on critical production assets in the Scandinavian offshore sector. The final report included an emissions dispersion model and in-depth feasibility review, and ultimately provided a one-stop pre-FEED product to the client.
Wood Group's collaborative support of multi-OEM fleets combined with sound safety practices, proven ability to conduct local operations and alignment of maintenance plans with specific production requirements is delivering ongoing value to our oil & gas customers.