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4 HYDROCARBON ASIA, JULY-SEPT 2012 Visit our website at: http://www.safan.com

Publisher/Executive EditorEddie Raj

Group EditorVishnu PillaiTel: 6222 3422 ext: 104email: vishnu@safan.com

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CORRESPONDENTS

Australia/PNGBrian Wickins

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Beijing, ChinaLi Peizhong

Wang Yong

Delhi, IndiaSiddharth Raghavan

New ZealandWarner Saville

PakistanDr Salman Saif Ghouri

Editorial Desk

HA

Reliability, Availability,Maintenance and Safety –Independent or Interdependent?

T wo issues have been resonatingaround plants the last two years;bottomline and safety. Slightly lessin the forefront has been reliability

and maintenance. Ever since the 2008financial crisis refineries have faced re-duced margins and have thus been facingan uphill battle to maintain profits as theupstream sector has rebounded much bet-ter than the downstream sector sofeedstock, though not as expensive as thepre-crisis days, is still pretty expensive.

The recent spate of accidents, both inthe upstream and downstream, have madesafety a critical issue. This leads to thequestion of whether the pursuit of biggermargins has to be at the expense of safetyprotocol and measures. Some of the per-sonnel on the ground feel that adhering tosafety protocol leads to a loss of produc-tive time. There is may also be somefeeling at the top that expenditure onsafety systems and procedures will eatinto the margins of refineries.

Following that school of thought it wouldappear that safety and bottomline move inopposite directions. However, I must disa-gree; thankfully so do many of the refineryoperators. Any savings made on produc-tion time and expenditure on safety sys-tems over the course of a decade will bewiped out by a single large-scale accident;and that is without taking into accountinjuries and loss of lives, which wouldimpossible to translate into dollars andcents. Contrary to simplistic views, focus-ing on safety and adhering to safe protocolsaves money in the long run.

What then about reliability? Is it linkedto safety? I think so. Reliable equipmentand systems contribute to smooth opera-tions as well as well as helping to avoidcritical failures. Think Macondo, where asystem failure contributed greatly to a cata-strophic accident. Looking at it from thatperspective it is apparent that that safetyand reliability are intrinsically linked.

Which brings us to maintenance. Propermaintenance, especially predictive main-tenance, will ensure that equipment andsystems are in top condition. As the sayinggoes, a nail in time saves nine. Accordingproper attention to a comprehensivemaintenance program will result in long-term cost savings and increased reliabil-ity, thus aiding in improving safety.

Availability, the last component ofRAMS, might seem to be not as clearlyaligned with the other three componentsbut is in fact the link between the threeand also the link with improving margins.Availability, simply put, means a lack ofdowntime. Increased availability is a re-sult of proper maintenance and in turnhelps raise the reliability bar. Increasedavailability also means increased pro-ductive time, which enables proper safetyprotocol to be followed without the lossof productive time.

No doubt, my explaination of the linksbetween the components of RAMS is ex-tremely simplistic, but I’ve done that in aneffort for brevity. It is meant more to en-courage thought on the concept ratherthan convince one of the concepts.

RAMS Asia is a conference and exhibi-tion which Hydrocarbon Asia has beenorganizing for nearly a decade to promotethis concept and I am proud to say thatwe must be contributing to the industry aswe have been receiving kudos for ourpromotion of the RAMS concept, and alook at the conference program, whichyou will find inside, will prove that theconcept has been widely received by theindustry. The presenter list, which readslike a who’s who of the regional down-stream sector, validates our efforts in pro-moting these tenets in the oil and gasindustry. I hope that you will continue tosupport and benefit from our efforts.

Vishnu PillaiGroup Editor