OREDA

The Offshore and Onshore Reliability Data (OREDA) project was established in 1981 in cooperation with the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (now Petroleum Safety Authority Norway). It is "one of the main reliability data sources for the oil and gas industry" and considered "a unique data source on failure rates, failure mode distribution and repair times for equipment used in the offshore industr[y]. OREDA's original objective was the collection of petroleum industry safety equipment reliability data. The current organization, as a cooperating group of several petroleum and natural gas companies, was established in 1983, and at the same time the scope of OREDA was extended to cover reliability data from a wide range of equipment used in oil and gas exploration and production (E&P). OREDA primarily covers offshore, subsea and topside equipment, but does also include some onshore E&P, and some downstream equipment as well.
The main objective of the OREDA project is to contribute to an improved safety and cost-effectiveness in design and operation of oil and gas E&P facilities, through collection and analysis of maintenance and operational data, establishment of a high quality reliability database, and exchange of reliability, availability, maintenance and safety (RAMS) technology among the participating companies.
History.
Work on the OREDA project proceeds in phases spanning 2–3 years. Handbooks summarizing the data collected and other work completed are issued regularly.
Participants.
At times companies have left or joined the project, sometimes as the result of name changes or mergers. The following table lists which companies have contributed data to the OREDA project in phases VIII, IX and XII.
Organization.
The OREDA project's Steering Committee consists of one member and one deputy member from each of the participating companies. From these members, a chairperson is elected, and appoints a Project Manager to coordinate activities approved by the steering committee. The Project Manager is also responsible for data quality assurance. Det Norske Veritas (DNV, now called DNV GL), an international certification body and classification society, served as Project Manager during phases I and II and SINTEF (Stiftelsen for INdustriell og TEknisk Forskning; "Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research" in English) during phases III–IX, after which DNV GL again took over Project Manager duties. The "OREDA Handbook" releases have been prepared as separate projects, but in consultation with the OREDA Steering Committee; the current version, 2015's 6th Edition, was prepared by SINTEF and NTNU (Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet; "Norwegian University of Science and Technology" in English), and is marketed by DNV GL.
Need.
Before the OREDA project began collecting data, "no authenticated source of failure information existed for offshore installations," and risk assessments had to be made using "generic data from onshore petroleum plants and data from other industries."
Data.
By 1996, OREDA had collated data about 24,000 pieces of equipment in use in offshore installations, and documented 33,000 equipment failures.
The severity of failures documented in the database are categorized as either critical, degradation, incipient, or unknown severity.
The database contains data from almost 300 installations, over 15,000 pieces of equipment, nearly 40,000 failure records, and close to 75,000 maintenance records. Access to this data, and to the search and analysis functions of the OREDA software, is restricted to the OREDA member companies, though contractors working with member companies may be granted temporary access.
Database structure.
Data are entered by installation and by owner. Each piece of equipment (e.g. a gas turbine) constitutes a single database inventory record, which includes a technical description of the equipment, and of its environmental and operating conditions, along with all associated failure events. Every failure event is given a set of data including failure cause, date, effect, and mode. Corrective and preventive maintenance data are also included.
Software.
The OREDA software handles data acquisition, analysis and collation. Features include advanced data search, automated data transfer, quality checking, reliability analyses, a tailor-made module for subsea data which includes an event-logging tool, and the option to configure user-defined applications. It can also be used to collect internal company data.
The most current version of the software, released in concert with the 6th edition of the "OREDA Handbook", contains an expanded set of equipment classes, including common subsea components, subsea control systems, subsea power cables, subsea pumps, and subsea vessels.
Impact.
Use of the OREDA database has "led to significant savings in the development and operation of platforms."
OREDA's example has inspired the creation of similar inter-company cooperation projects in related fields, such as the SPARTA (System Performance, Availability and Reliability Trend Analysis) database created by the wind farm industry in the UK.