Power failures in any business can be devastating, but oil and gas projects the knock-on effects of power loss can be a critically damaging event. As noted in a previous article, oil and gas extraction sites demand continuous functioning to ensure pipeline pressure. At best, a site shutdown can have a knock-on effect of post-extraction clients, such as tankers missing deadlines, and at worst, power-failures can result in leaks and spills, compounding your revenue losses
Avoiding a power failure begins with preparation, careful planning, and ensuring that you purchase a reliable generator from a reputable partner. If you choose to invest in a used generator, ensure that they have undergone servicing and testing and that you continue this testing regularly.
Many times managers will neglect to ensure that regular maintenance is carried out, and it is in these situations that the breakdowns described elsewhere occur. Be diligent, and the easily avoidable breakdowns that can occur can be avoided.
On a long enough timescale, however, power failures are inevitable. For a remote location where it can take a long time to ship a replacement generation, it is necessary for you to have a plan in place for how to deal with this eventuality. The surest way for you to plan for this contingency by having a redundancy or failsafe capacity on-hand for an immediate switchover. This reduces your risk of loss of production capacity and revenue.
Consult with one of our experts today to help evaluate the risk of power failure and the steps you can take to mitigate these risks.