William F. Venn, of EPConsult talks to ROGTEC Magazine

William F. Venn CEng, FIChemE, is a Principal Consultant and Technical Safety and Risk Assessment Engineer with EPConsult. He has a BSc (Hons) in Chemical Engineering and over 30 years experience in oil and gas in the UK and overseas. He has worked for British Petroleum and Aker Kvaerner before joining EPConsult. He was a member of the EU sponsored Tyumen Task Force as environmentalist / facilities engineer and participated in site surveys and scoping model developments in Western Siberia in 1993. His experience has developed to include economic assessment, HS&E in design, chairing HAZID and HAZOP workshops, including recently for a major refinery, and interfacing with the regulator and verification bodies. He has operating and design engineering experience in the North Sea, Arctic, Atlantic Margin and UK Land and has completed a range of risk assessment and facilities engineering studies including in fine chemicals, a metal refinery and rail.

How long have you been doing business in the region?
I was involved with TTF in Western Siberia in 1993, and as a production and then process engineer was involved full time in oilfield development and operations in the arctic between 1978 and 1985. I became involved with the Shtokman project with EPConsult in 2008.

EPConsult has been doing business in the Region since 2003, when we completed two risk assessment studies:
Quantitative Risk Analysis of Shipping Hazards to the nearshore sections of oil, gas and condensate pipelines in Sangachal Bay in the Caspian Sea; and a risk assessment for the deferral of hydrotesting for the Sakhalin II development project.

We became involved in the Shtokman Gas – Condensate Field – Phase 1; where we successfully completed the HS&E Engineering and Risk Assessment scope for FEED.

In 2008, we prepared sections of the HS&E Management System for an E&P Company in Ukraine. We also completed some QRA studies and a programme of Hazard and Operability Studies for gas field facilities including the wellhead, well pad manifolding, central processing facilities, product storage and tanker truck loading facilities. This work involved new developments as well as a significant brownfield and tie-in scope.

Do you have a specific target markets in the region?
Yes, we feel that EPConsult can participate effectively in the markets in the Region through providing hazard management, risk assessment and facility and value engineering studies for oil and gas projects. We feel we have the breadth and depth of experience to provide meaningful and useful studies for Russia’s climate and geography. We can provide this expertise in the onshore and offshore market place as well as for development in the taiga and tundra environment.

What are your key products for the region and their benefits?
Overall, our study methodologies are geared towards helping in the success of a client’s project. Our tools comprise in-house and commercial software.

Our key products are risk assessment studies, interactive safety study workshops and reliability and maintainability studies. We also conduct value engineering workshops, development studies and operation optimisation studies.

The key benefit of the risk assessment studies and the safety reviews is that the operator and project personnel become aware of and can take ownership of the potential major accident hazards in the project and of the actions required to keep them in check.

It can also be that the project is not accepted by the regulator for development unless the risk assessment and environmental impact assessment scope is shown to be comprehensive and robust.

Value engineering studies enable experienced project personnel to review a project scope and with the guidance of the workshop facilitator to search out value adding practices to the process, to equipment, to procurement and to the construction programme.

EPConsult has developed software for the management of risks: EPRisk; and menu driven software for the preparation of capital cost estimates: EPCostimator. The benefits of this software is that it enables comparisons to be made readily, which is particularly important for evaluating alternative development scenarios.

What potential is there for your products in the market?
Our understanding is that there is a clear potential for our products and know-how in the market.

How do you compare and compete with existing Russian Technology?
We often find that we do compare technologies, particularly in HAZOP Studies and in FMEAs, where we need to understand the failure modes and the effects of a range of process safeguarding technologies. We also need to be aware of differences in the regulatory regime.

For our software products, EPConsult would seek to ensure that our software products can be effective in Russia.

How do you see the market developing over the next 5 years in your industry sector?
We think there is a clear role for risk assessment studies, interactive safety studies and Value Engineering workshops in the challenging environment of onshore and offshore oil and gas developments, both greenfield and brownfield, in Russia. Depending on the development strategy for the Region, we see an expanding and diversified market.

Do you have any new products being launched?
Yes, we are currently upgrading our in-house risk management software EPRisk, and have recently designed and built and tested a CAPEX estimating tool. An add-on programme for projecting OPEX is being scoped.

Do you have any recent regional success stories?
Yes, we have recently completed the HS&E Engineering scope for the Integrated Development of the Shtokman Gas-Condensate Field – Phase 1. The scope includes the facilitation of a HAZID workshop and providing input to the Verification Scheme. We completed a number of risk assessment studies: Onshore trunkline QRA including an assessment of the requirement for a Landfall Isolation Valve; a Study to assess the risks of fishing and shipping to the offshore trunkline, a dropped object study and an emissions dispersion modeling study, which computed and plotted the potential progress of flammable gas clouds from trunkline leak scenarios.