ABSTRACT. Optimizing The Balance Between Production Availability, Capex And Opex Of Projects While Managing Environmental Aspects With A Simulation Tool

Conference: ADIPEC 2023.

Abstract title: Optimizing The Balance Between Production Availability, Capex And Opex Of Projects While Managing Environmental Aspects With A Simulation Tool.
Authors: Nicolas Clavé, Maïder Estécahandy.

With economic and environmental constraints growing stronger every day, engineering high-performance system architectures at an acceptable cost is of critical importance. The ability to quickly model the various alternatives under consideration in order to calculate their production availability plays a key role here.

The basis of the technique our team worked out is in fact not really new. The idea is to build a Production Availability or RAM (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability) model into a specific tool in a block flow diagram format, that is a well-known approach. Then, by integrating GHG (GreenHouse Gas) emission estimates and costs, and by modelling the different options under study, the results obtained can provide decision aid support to project teams and operated sites. Many aspects can be tested on future or new installations: design/redundancy levels, operating philosophy, maintenance philosophy, spare part management… The final objective is to compare the different options and determine the one optimizing at the best the balance between performances, costs, and environmental aspects.

It is important to point out that economic i.e. CAPEX (CAPEX = CAPital EXpenditure), OPEX (OPEX = OPerational EXpenditure), cash flow, NPV (Net Present Value)… calculations performed can only provide rough estimates. Indeed, all topics being not covered in detail, these first economic results have to be confirmed by real calculations performed by architects or strategy team members.

The new modelling/simulation tool has been developed in the GRIF software suite (GRaphical Interface for reliability Forecasting, a technology of TotalEnergies) environment and is named Petro module. It is the only software module of its kind in our industry. It has significantly modified the working methods of our reliability engineers and field development engineers, providing effective decision support. It has enabled us to test and validate proposals that have reduced CAPEX and OPEX by more than $400 million over the past 3 years. New uses for these models are likely to emerge as modeling times are drastically reduced and the solution is connected to our supercomputer.

Keywords: Production availability; Production performance forecast; Economics; CAPEX estimates; OPEX estimates; Dependability simulation; Probabilistic model; Petri Nets; Monte-Carlo simulation