Predictive Maintenance Saves Millions in Gulf Offshore Operations

As hurricane season approaches, offshore operators in the Gulf of Mexico face the threat of severe weather disrupting operations. In September 2024, a significant storm caused unplanned outages that affected 16% of total crude oil production in the federal Gulf area.

The industry needs to move beyond relying on alarms and towards predictive maintenance, which uses data to identify emerging issues before they become major problems.

Shape Digital, an AI-powered solution born out of MODEC's experience, offers a platform called Shape Lighthouse that detects potential equipment threats, diagnoses their causes, and recommends maintenance actions.

A recent case study on a Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSO) demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach. The operator used Shape Lighthouse to diagnose a developing imbalance in a high-pressure gas compressor, which was projected to fail five months later.

Thanks to this early warning, the team was able to take proactive measures, restoring a backup system and completing maintenance before the predicted failure time. This avoided an estimated 26,400 boe loss and 30 days of unplanned downtime.