Corrosion

The North Sea is one of the most challenging and hostile working environments for oil and gas extraction in the world. Offshore installations are subject to severe environmental and operational conditions which pose significant corrosive effects from the reservoir and weather in an exposed marine environment.

Offshore Division seeks a lifecycle management approach which starts with the initial selection of appropriate materials and follows through the lifecycle with effective inspection, maintenance, repair and replacement.

• Offshore External Corrosion Management Inspection Project report
  This report explains the programme of work, its methodology and provides an analysis of its findings. A key finding is that a focus on preventing major offshore incidents is leading some companies to neglect the general maintenance of their oil and gas platforms. The project completed a programme of 30 dutyholder inspections. Each consisted of an onshore inspection of the management system controls for external corrosion and an offshore inspection of at least one of the dutyholders’ installations to examine their implementation. A key part of the offshore inspection was an evaluation of the physical condition of the defined plant and equipment types.
• Materials and corrosion topic strategy
  Sets out the OSD five-year strategy (2009-20143) in relation to the major hazards threat to the safety of persons on offshore installations from loss of integrity due to materials and corrosion failures.
• Offshore external corrosion guide
  Enables OSD inspectors to make consistent judgements about external corrosion on offshore installations hydrocarbon systems.
• Stress corrosion cracking of duplex stainless steel piping systems in hot chloride service
  (Offshore Information Sheet 7/2007) Highlights recent experience of stress corrosion cracking that has occurred to duplex stainless steel alloys in topsides process plant. These alloys are finding increasing application where high resistance to hot liquids containing chloride is required. This guidance relates to topsides process plant only and replaces Safety Notice 3/03 (issued Dec 2003).