ExxonMobil - Edif Group

Case study
ExxonMobil
The background
The client
West Qurna is located north of
Rumaila field, west of Basra, Iraq.
Believed to hold 43 billion barrels of
recoverable reserves, West Qurna is
the second largest field in the world
after Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar oil field.
ExxonMobil is the world’s largest publicly traded international Oil & Gas company and the
world’s largest refiner and marketer of petroleum products.
Project overview
Edif NDE was commissioned to inspect
the manufacture of more than 42,000
pipes – totalling 500,000 metres of
pipelines within the West Qurna field.
We provided inspection surveillance
services, overseeing the production
and testing processes of the chosen
suppliers. This work took place in
Russia, and covered the steel-making
factory, pipe-rolling mill, two external
coating lines and the port activity.
Our approach
Edif NDE and representatives from ExxonMobil reviewed the manufacturing procedure
specifications and the supplier’s procedures. This provided discussion points and areas
needing clarity ahead of the pre-inspection meeting at the supplier’s facilities in Volzhsky.
A subsequent pre-inspection meeting covered every facet of the project, including:
• Purchase order review, lines of communication, production schedule and sub-orders
• Fabrication, inspection and testing requirements (including QCP review and mark-up of
Hold, Witness, Monitor and Review points).
Our services
The main areas of inspection for the Edif NDE team were:
• Steel-making/billet forming plant
• Test house
• Bare pipes production and testing within the seamless mill
Our findings
• Coating application and load-out by wagons to the port of departure.
Our inspectors noted several areas that
required correcting. These included:
The result
• Discrepancies between English and
Russian guidance documents
• Pipe traceability issues
• A high rejection rate at the
finishing area
Throughout the course of the project, we detected issues or processes not being carried out as
efficiently as possible and made recommendations to avoid follow-on issues, which included:
• Helping the supplier improve its workmanship levels
• Rejecting billets if incomplete quantities had been fed into the furnace
• Increasing pipe inspection levels, following the rejection of pipes by the Edif NDE team
• Contamination of external surfaces
of pipes
• Recommending a new approach to the unique sequential identification numbering
applied to pipes during mechanical testing and chemical analysis.
• An unsafe system for identifying
pipes.
Through the efforts of the Edif NDE team, all 42,000+ pipes were completed to a high
quality and in compliance with the applying project and international standards.
ExxonMobil successfully commissioned the pipeline and the field went into production.
To discover more please email
[email protected] or visit
our website at www.edifgroup.com
7228 | 30.03.15
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