An overview of turbomachinery project in Malaysian oil and gas industry

Abstract

Being the most demanding, challenging and exciting engineering and technological advances has provided escalated interests amongst the engineers at large to venture into the oil and gas (O&G) industry. Although claimed as the most expensive industry in the world via the utilisation of critical equipments, the O&G industry is still recording notorius failures in its project management especially due to turbomachinery issues, the heart equipment of any O&G project. Therefore, it is important for this paper to review turbomachinery project as one of the long lead items during project executions that is also proven to be the most costly and expensive equipment. This paper therefore discusses the gaps in turbomachinery studies via literature review in highlighting its application in O&G projects. It is found that the main components of turbomachinery are driver and driven equipment, which are applied for mechanical equipment, Electric Power Generation and heat generation for Combined Cycled Configuration. Important variables for turbomachinery selection include: (1) process requirement; (2) site location; (3) driver selection; (4) equipment sparing philosophy; (5) efficiency and reliability; (6) operability and maintainability; and (7) cost. It is hoped that this paper would lead to the successful project management of turbomachinery in the O&G industry.