RasGas Company Limited (RasGas) organised the second RasGas Reliability Forum on reliability sustainment and improvement at the RasGas premises in Ras Laffan, with the participation of shareholders Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil, in addition to representatives from Qatargas.

The Forum was attended by over 125 delegates including professionals, industry leaders and subject matter experts from various disciplines like Engineering, Manufacturing, Maintenance and Projects.

The objective of the forum was to review core processes, systems and performances related to reliability with an emphasis on exploring improvement opportunities through open dialogue between all participants.

Over 20 presentations were delivered in the Forum covering all aspects of Reliability from Equipment Strategies, Root Cause Failure Analyses, Surveillance, Emergency Response, longer shutdown intervals, reduced shutdown durations, ageing and obsolescence.

The Forum provided an opportunity for RasGas and its shareholders to obtain comprehensive insights on the status of reliability improvement plans and issues through the dimensions of management processes, equipment and technology issues, people competencies and capabilities and to share best practices in this regard.

It facilitated leading edge reliability management discussions focusing on sustaining and improving reliability as well as the significant progress since the last Forum that was held in 2013.

"Reliability is at the forefront of what we do as it safeguards RasGas’ reputation as a reliable supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG)," said RasGas CEO Hamad Rashid Al Mohannadi.

"The two-day Forum was designed for open dialog, sharing ideas, collectively learning and adopting leading edge practices," said RasGas Chief Operations Officer Hamad Mubarak Al Muhannadi, .

The presentations in the Forum highlighted Root Cause Failure Analyses insights, deeper understandings into previous incidents such as plant trips with a view to improve engineering systems, troubleshooting, emergency response, Operations and Maintenance procedures. Workout groups in the Forum brainstormed best practices among various operators in the region and ExxonMobil global practices.

Also discussed were issues surrounding spare parts and life cycle management, technical studies for ageing plant and equipment, utilising a Prevent-Detect-Respond and Recover framework for Reliability, people competencies, training and specifics like Operator Care and Single Point Failures, Facilities Integrity and Surveillance.

The Forum participants commented that the key to reliability success is growing collective people skills and individual skills along with imbibing motivation from the peer groups. They also highlighted the importance of strong partnership between shareholders and affiliate companies.

The discussions in the Forum also reiterated that cost optimisation should be achieved without compromising safety and reliability. It also suggested benchmarking the reliability achievements with a view to sharing best practices between operators.