SEAR JIP: the value of sharing of lessons learned on subsea integrity and reliability

Abstract

The award-winning Subsea Equipment Australian Reliability (SEAR) Joint Industry Project (JIP) is a partnership led by Wood and has participation of a group of OGAS Operators namely Chevron Australia, ConocoPhillips, Inpex, Quadrant, Shell Australia and Woodside. Now delivering Phase 6, the JIP is focused on collaboration and knowledge sharing, so as to improve the competitiveness of Australia’s oil and gas sector by addressing critical challenges associated with equipment that is failing prematurely subsea. The SEAR JIP was initiated in 2014 and has since developed a reliability database to collect failure information from SEAR members with Australian offshore operations. The SEAR database provides a low cost–high value method of capturing and sharing failures and lessons learnt for Australia. Over the years, the JIP has focused on different but common industry challenges, such as the impact of marine fouling affecting operability during interventions. To address this challenge, the JIP is deploying ‘living laboratories’ at different geographical locations and water depths across various Australian waters, in collaboration with suppliers and local universities to identify game-changing technology. The ability to better understand failures and intervention requirements has the potential to offer operators significant cost savings, by optimising equipment reliability and availability. This paper will provide an overview of SEAR JIP and outlines lessons learned and value created, and discusses how a similar collaborative approach can create value in other parts of the Australian LNG value chain.