Case study ExxonMobil The background The client West Qurna is located north of Rumaila field, west of Basra, Iraq. Believed to hold 43 billion barrels of recoverable reserves, West Qurna is the second largest field in the world after Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar oil field. ExxonMobil is the world’s largest publicly traded international Oil & Gas company and the world’s largest refiner and marketer of petroleum products. Project overview Edif NDE was commissioned to inspect the manufacture of more than 42,000 pipes – totalling 500,000 metres of pipelines within the West Qurna field. We provided inspection surveillance services, overseeing the production and testing processes of the chosen suppliers. This work took place in Russia, and covered the steel-making factory, pipe-rolling mill, two external coating lines and the port activity. Our approach Edif NDE and representatives from ExxonMobil reviewed the manufacturing procedure specifications and the supplier’s procedures. This provided discussion points and areas needing clarity ahead of the pre-inspection meeting at the supplier’s facilities in Volzhsky. A subsequent pre-inspection meeting covered every facet of the project, including: • Purchase order review, lines of communication, production schedule and sub-orders • Fabrication, inspection and testing requirements (including QCP review and mark-up of Hold, Witness, Monitor and Review points). Our services The main areas of inspection for the Edif NDE team were: • Steel-making/billet forming plant • Test house • Bare pipes production and testing within the seamless mill Our findings • Coating application and load-out by wagons to the port of departure. Our inspectors noted several areas that required correcting. These included: The result • Discrepancies between English and Russian guidance documents • Pipe traceability issues • A high rejection rate at the finishing area Throughout the course of the project, we detected issues or processes not being carried out as efficiently as possible and made recommendations to avoid follow-on issues, which included: • Helping the supplier improve its workmanship levels • Rejecting billets if incomplete quantities had been fed into the furnace • Increasing pipe inspection levels, following the rejection of pipes by the Edif NDE team • Contamination of external surfaces of pipes • Recommending a new approach to the unique sequential identification numbering applied to pipes during mechanical testing and chemical analysis. • An unsafe system for identifying pipes. Through the efforts of the Edif NDE team, all 42,000+ pipes were completed to a high quality and in compliance with the applying project and international standards. ExxonMobil successfully commissioned the pipeline and the field went into production. To discover more please email [email protected] or visit our website at www.edifgroup.com 7228 | 30.03.15 Design by Avatar Creative