Risk-based asset condition management programs have been around for years now, and have been a vital part of LOOP’s success in our quest for operational excellence. As we strive to succeed in the crude oil pipeline industry and maintain a sound asset management program while honoring our social contract (LOOP’s ESG program), we have been faced with more challenges in recent years than ever before in our company’s history. To conquer these challenges, we’ve relied on data gathering and critical thinking to make informed, risk-based decisions. As a result, we’ve maintained both business continuity and the uptime of our critical assets. We believe, therefore, that this methodology has been the key to successfully navigating through adversity.
Overcoming asset management challenges during a pandemic and back-to-back hurricanes
As LOOP and the entire world dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic, our market saw a drastic reduction in the demand for crude oil, which forced us to pivot in many aspects of our business. While we were adjusting to the early months of the pandemic, which resulted in more employees working from home, we continued to move crude oil to meet market demand and maintain our assets in new and innovative ways. Certain asset health management programs were altered to continue to monitor and maintain the condition of our assets, which required critical thinking through trying times.
Prior to resuming inspections and predictive routes, we reevaluated our criticality ranking of key assets and prioritized field integrity assessments, thermography, ultrasound, oil analysis, ultrasonic greasing and vibration routes based on current asset criticality. Due to the market downturn and how we receive and deliver crude oil these days, which is different from when LOOP was first commissioned in 1981, the operational context of many assets changed, which in turn altered the resulting criticality ranking of those assets. A reevaluation of asset condition compared to asset criticality and risks helped set the best priorities for the necessary field work.
To minimize personnel working in close proximity to one another in the field, we allowed our maintenance & reliability technicians to self-permit their work, preventing physical interaction with Operations while communication, planning and scheduling still took place remotely.
When considering risks in our asset management decisions, we also look at all associated risks from two perspectives — the risk to the organization if we don’t perform the work and the risk if we do. Working remotely via web meetings, we obtained stakeholder input to risk rankings, criticality rankings, work plans, preventive maintenance procedures, scope of work documents and more to make the best decisions on the prioritization of field work to maintain critical asset uptime and business continuity while protecting people from exposure to COVID-19.
After resuming our field predictive routes and inspections, we made some great finds using airborne ultrasound to locate and prevent impending failures on a 13.8kV transfer switch and 115kV PTs in our substations. We also found high vibration signatures on some of our delivery pumps, and held web meetings to determine whether to pull those pumps or utilize other pumps in series given the lower demand. Again, critical thinking in challenging times sometimes results in not proceeding or in delaying recommended work.
Just as we were in a good rhythm and dealing with the pandemic, hurricanes Zeta and Ida hit the majority of our operating facilities and impacted most of our employees’ homes over a two-year period. Damage from hurricanes of this magnitude, with over 190 mph sustained winds at peak, will cause any company with exposed field assets to become more reactive and less proactive due to the sheer volume of repairs required to maintain business continuity.
Once again, we leaned on critical thinking, risk management and cross-functional stakeholder input to prioritize our repair work in phases. When repairs were completed to a point where preventive and predictive maintenance could resume, we once again used a criticality ranking and risk-based approach to prioritize our work efforts in the field. We performed a top to bottom PM Optimization review and made significant changes to our asset health management program as a whole.
Each year, we look at the “top 20%” or the highest ranking risk to the company to prioritize and budget our work. As higher ranked risks are mitigated, they fall to the lower risk ranking reports and we then address the next highest risks. In this tiered approach, we are able to continuously move the needle by mitigating risks, thereby lowering our exposure to asset failure while preventing incidents.
Having decades of risk management experience, Joseph A. DeCuir, LOOP’s Manager of Asset Integrity, reminds us of three critical components of a robust, risk-based decision process:
- When making risk-based decisions, we must consider any “unintended consequences”. This is especially true in our management of change process. Great ideas may come with consequences that were not anticipated, resulting in significant process or safety risks that must be mitigated prior to proceeding or, in some cases, may drive your decision to not proceed.
- When we make risk-based decisions, we must integrate multiple data sets to verify that we are sufficiently informed about all aspects of the asset’s condition before proceeding. In large operating companies, the engineering, asset integrity, operations, maintenance and reliability programs are often overseen by multiple departments. This can create silos and stifle collaboration. We need to have a shared mindset about asset health management, which can only be achieved by collaborating cross functionally to break down silos and integrate our risk-based decision processes.
- Never let a critical decision linger! No decision is a decision in itself and is almost always the wrong decision. Make sure you invite the correct personnel with the appropriate skill sets into the conversation to make an informed decision timely, and keep an open mind to change your thinking based on any new information provided.
Factoring LOOP’s social contract into risk-based decisions
At LOOP, we take our license to operate seriously. We call it the LOOP Social Contract, also known in the industry as our mature Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) program. We also factor impacts to the elements of our social contract in our risk-based decision process.
The LOOP Social Contract, therefore, underpins our decisions and actions. Focusing on the future of energy is core to our mission. Today’s preeminent global challenge is balancing higher energy demand from a growing population with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As LOOP operates, we strive to cause no harm to people or the environment.
In the rapidly changing world that we live in, energy and the efficient use of natural resources play important roles. Protecting and maintaining our communities and the environment while powering our modern lifestyles is vital. The energy industry is evolving quickly as new production and competition for markets contend with shifting views on carbon and fossil fuel.
LOOP values the communities we operate in and every molecule of crude petroleum we move as an important link in the global energy supply. We continually work to ensure that our facilities operate as safely and efficiently as possible. In fact, we use far less energy today than we did 10 years ago, which has, in turn, reduced our greenhouse gas emissions significantly.
We view all forms of energy as important tools to support a growing, global population. The efficient use of crude petroleum will join renewables, such as biomass, wind, solar and alternatives, to power the world. LOOP views its role in supporting and optimizing the global petroleum marketplace as a steward in helping our communities flourish and allowing the world to use its resources in the most efficient and responsible manner possible.
For LOOP to successfully advance into the future, we will be required to respond to the changing world. When we focus on our social contract and make informed decisions, we position ourselves to meet global challenges and thrive in changing environments. As we continue to implement our risk-based asset management programs and utilize critical thinking through adversity, we will not lose sight of our ultimate goal of protecting the “three Ps” — People, Pipe and Planet.
Special Recognition
In 2021, an Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) Performance-Based Goal Team (PBGT) of cross-functional LOOP employees was established to evaluate LOOP’s legacy social contract and offer continuous improvement strategies to ensure program effectiveness. The social contract section of this article contains excerpts of LOOP’s external web page ( https://www.loopllc.com/LOOP-Social-Contract) further describing our ESG program, and was written as a collaborative effort by this team. Thanks to all who participated on the 2021 ESG PBGT for LOOP, and to those who are now implementing the tactical objectives derived from the strategies developed by the team.
David A. Martin, CMRP (d. 2018) - In the words of the late David A. Martin, CMRP, LOOP\u2019s past Reliability Planning Supervisor and coauthor of two Keeping it Simple series Maintenance & Reliability books (Lubrication 101 and Metrics/KPIs 101), we continue in our efforts to perform "the right maintenance at the right time"!