Maddox Files #3

Hey Family,

   Our last update was pretty recent, so I just had a few things that I wanted to share with ya'll, its mostly related to work stuff, if that doesn't interest you, that's okay, you don't have to read this.

   This week at work I had scheduled a Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) for the project I was working on (the Manka Facility). The meeting is a chance to review the safety of the design and make sure we considered what would happen in various cases. This is a pretty standard thing and pretty routine, but it didn't go at all according to plan.

   The design is captured in a document called a P&ID. I had prepared a P&ID for the facility, which was my scope of work, but I did not include the equipment and piping that connected the facility to the wells. This scope belonged to someone else.

   As the PHA got started we hit rough patches almost immediately. The guy that covered the well hook-ups didn't have his scope ironed out very well, and there were a lot of comments on his piece. There were also some discrepancies between his drawings and mine on the piece of equipment that we had in common (a 3 phase separator used to allocate or count the gas, oil and water that ran through it). On a standard piece of equipment that should have been a 30 to 45 minute exercise we took 3 hours to evaluate the safety. It was lunch time and we hadn't even started looking at the scope of my facility yet. I had been 'filibustered' by Operations and Gary for facilities.

   I have seen facilities be run through a PHA with minimal documentation. Basically they just want to know the bare essentials of the project. I had sufficient documentation and safety implementations equivalent to our currently operating facilities. The safety aspects of the design weren't a concern, I was getting held up by two other problems, neither of which were 'safety'.

   First, Operations had a problem with the lack of an atmospheric separator. They hadn't seen a facility without one before and didn't like that we were taking it out. I had been tasked to find a way to meet all the technical, regulatory and safety requirements with minimal capital and that required eliminating some equipment. They weren't a fan of the idea and didn't like that we trying to do it.

   The second issue was a question on whether the facility as designed would meet regulatory requirements. Long story short, when the work on the design started we got with regulations and back calculated the facility capacity from the regulatory requirements. Ron gave us a green light that we meet the VOC requirements of TCEQ, which were the limiting factor. He indicated that we would need a permanent flaring permit as well.

  Gary recently started working for Murphy. He didn't see my design until days before the PHA. He had some serious concerns about the TRC flaring permits and whether they would be granted. (There are two governing agencies in Texas with different regulations, the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality). He spoke with the recently hired regulatory manager (Ron's boss) and she told him that we would not be allowed the flaring permits as we would be flaring too much gas. Basically, Ron and his boss were of opposite opinions on this particular point, which was a key assumption in the design of the facility.

   Between operations wanting an AP vessel and Gary's concerns about regulatory requirements I was stuck. They PHA was derailed entirely and finally called to an early end. We converted it into a design review and Operations got their chance to write their Christmas-list of features on the project. All of which add additional cost to the facility.

   While my painful meeting was progressing, by boss Jaimee was fighting another battle. Two months of preparation involving over 80 Murphy Employees had generated the overall plan and strategy for developing the oil leases. Facilities are a key part. Jaimee was put on the spot to explain why a 4000 bbl facility cost $8.5 million while the 3000 bbl facility  designed would only cost $3.5 million. In the mind of the vice president it was clearly better to use the facility that had 3/4 of the capacity for less than half the cost.

    At Murphy, the upper management has become dominated by people rising from the drilling side. They understand the reservoir and the downhole portion, which accounts for about 70% of the capital we expend, but they are blind to the part of work that I and my team focus on.

   Jaimee was trying to explain to them the differences in equipment, functionality, operability and regulatory assumptions that resulted in the two items. The VP was being difficult, questioning everything, and not buying into what she was saying. Finally she explained to him that at the very moment they were having the meeting, the design for the smaller facilities was being torn apart and operations was refusing to approve it because it didn't have the additional features they wanted. Operations has a way of getting what they want, if they don't like it, they will make sure it doesn't run. If it doesn't run, no one makes any money. They have a lot of weight to throw around.

   

          That is the end of my story for today, if you're interested I can tell you how it concludes when I know what is going to happen. I just wanted to share some of the things that I have been up to with work and let you all get a feel for the kind of things I do there. Love you all!