Marathon Oil Takes Infrared In-House  

Unlike other oil and gas production companies who subcontract condition monitoring Marathon Oil is committed to undertaking this highly valuable work in house. Reliability Offshore Supervisor Lee McFarlane explains, “We see great value in having our own equipment and in training a dedicated team of technicians. It allows us to collate all the data to get maximum return from our reliability programme.”

As a result, the company invested in its own top-of-the-range Flir (UK) P-Series thermal imaging camera. During an early training session onboard one of the Brae platforms the Flir P-Series camera picked up a high potential electrical fault. Lee McFarlane adds, “If it hadn’t been identified it would have certainly have impacted on our operations. Within days we were finding faults and anomalies across various applications.”

The Marathon Oil reliability teams serve the Brae field which is in the North Sea, about 150 miles north east of Aberdeen. The field has a mixture of oil and gas condensate reservoirs, the output from which is processed by the three offshore platforms and piped back to the UK.

“Thermal imaging is massively useful in offshore applications due to the nature of the equipment and systems onboard,” Lee McFarlane continues. “As a result we are using the technology for electrical, process and mechanical applications across a range of equipment, anything from inspecting low voltage panels through to troubleshooting jet engines.”

The team monitors faults and takes remedial action when appropriate and ensures the problem is worked through its Root Cause Analysis (RCA) system so that, if possible, it can be engineered out to prevent any further detrimental effect on operations.