Asset Integrity

The key target of Asset Integrity is to prevent major incident hazards. As defined by the IOGP Standard no.456, Asset Integrity is achieved when facilities are structurally and mechanically sound, perform the processes and produce the products, for which they were designed.

KPO is committed to monitoring potential threats to its operations and continue working on mitigation of high risks through the safety barrier system. KPO’s Asset Integrity department continuously assess the ‘health status’ of the safety barriers to identify ‘holes in the barriers’ and to prevent any accidents.

Tab. 18. Targets in Asset Integrity

The objective of KPO Asset Integrity is to prevent major incidents and reduce risks to people, environment, assets, and the Company’s reputation. In order to reduce the risk, we have defined barriers that relate to plant, people and processes, thus managing the major accident hazards to a level that is as low as reasonably practicable.

KPO Asset Integrity Management System is a set of measures to prevent major accident hazards and to raise hazard awareness amongst the KPO employees, all contractors and subcontractors working at the Karachaganak field.

Since 2014, KPO has been applying its Asset Integrity Management System, which is focused on the four core tools:

1. Barrier Model,
2. Asset Integrity Key Performance Indicators,
3. Management of Change system for brownfield modifications,
4. Process Safety Fundamentals campaign.

Barrier model

In 2020, KPO Asset Integrity Department has been working on a customised configuration of a software tool developed by a specialized software company RiskPoynt to enhance the existing Excel-based Barrier Model Tool. The new solution is an innovative, operational risk management tool that provides analytics and metrics to ensure the highest level of safety and security for KPO assets.

The KPO Barrier Model software was upgraded to the level of KPO requirements in order to improve efficiency of the process with increasing “live data” and to reduce the response time of dealing with identified potential hazards. KPO launched the new Barrier Model tool on 22 December 2020.

Loss of primary containment

Loss of Primary Containment (LOPC) is an unplanned or uncontrolled release of any material from primary containment, including non-toxic and non-flammable materials. The KPO 2020 Loss of Primary Containment Report provides for the analysis of the LOPC incidents that occurred during 2020 along with their defined recovery actions in terms of:

• Root causes (in accordance with Incident Investigation Tap Root Methodology),
• Level of compliance with Process Safety Fundamental rules,
• Status of corrective actions,
• Weeps & Seeps Leaks Register data.

Management and analysis of major accident hazards is the key to prevent or reduce the likelihood and severity of process safety events. Once a Process Safety event occurs, the investigation process is initiated with logging it in the KPO Synergi database. KPO investigation team analyse the root causes and develop recommendations and an action plan. Further implementation of actions is monitored via the Synergi database.

Statistical analysis for 2018–2020 shows that the number of LOPC events increased by 12 % in 2020 against the 2019 performance, and the incidents severity was also increased. Only one Tier 2 Process Safety event occurred at KPC: gas leak at KPC Flash Gas Compressor building as shown on the graph.

Graph 6: Loss of Primary Containment at KPO by process facilities, 2018–2020

Note: For Process Safety Event definition (Tier-1/2/3), please refer to the International Standard IOGP 456.

Asset Integrity KPI

Our Key Performance Indicators in Asset Integrity aim to identify precursor events or conditions that could ultimately lead to higher-level consequences or to enable prevention of their occurrence. KPO monitors both lagging and leading indicators, as per the Recommended Practice API RP 754, recommendations of the IOGP 456 Standard, and Eni and Shell guidelines on the Asset Integrity KPI reporting. As part of the 2020 Parent Companies’ audit findings, the KPI process was upgraded with identification of allocated ‘traffic lights’ for missed KPIs in internal system.

In 2020, the Asset Integrity department delivered the monthly and quarterly reporting and analysis of the Asset Integrity KPI’s as reflected in the Asset Integrity KPI Scorecards.

As part of continuous improvement and awareness raising, the KPI pyramid was supplemented with the Tier 1-3 ratio reflecting the number of occurred events by levels to the total number of man-hours worked by the employees of contracting and subcontracting organizations.

Due to the lack of resources and COVID-19 restrictions in the year, KPO Asset Integrity did not work on digitization opportunities for inputs to the scorecards and dashboards and other automated processing as part of the KPO Digitization programme.

In 2020, Asset Integrity department continued working on monthly collection, structuring, regular updating and discussion of KPIs and data for the information panel (general KPIs and separately for facilities).

Management of Change System for brownfield modifications

Management of Change is a system that ensures that any changes related to modification of equipment are evaluated, authorised and documented before they are implemented, thus ensuring the continued integrity of the plant.

Our Management of Change system is widely used by the KPO departments involved in the process of equipment modifications. In total as of end 2020, 1,946 electronic changes (or eMoCs) were registered in the system, of those 9,8 % were raised during 2020. Overall, 814 changes were closed in the system, of which 136 have been closed within 2020.

Asset Integrity department together with all Units have achieved the reduction of the number of eMoCs in backlog. Comparing to 2019, Backlog electronic changes decreased by 58.8 % with the remaining backlog of 247. In 2021, we target to improve the system efficiency by reducing the backlog and preventing its further accumulation.

Alarm Management

In 2020, the Alarm Rationalisation Programme has been finalised and the ownership has been passed to Central Maintenance department for implementation (phase III). During Q1 2020, brief training to all Central Maintenance Operators and Supervisors was carried out in preparation for the implementation phase.

Process Safety Fundamentals campaign

The Process Safety Fundamentals (PSFs) campaign was started in 2017. The campaign is focused on raising awareness of the operations frontline personnel about the hazards that may occur while operating the process facilities.

In 2020, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Process Safety Awareness campaign has been put on hold.