Prediction of failure rates for new subsea systems: a practical approach and an illustrative example

In the subsea oil and gas industry, new systems and new technologies are often met with skepticism, since the operators fear that they may fail and lead to production loss, costly repair interventions, and hydrocarbon leakages to the sea. Before a new system is accepted, the producer has to convince the operator that it is fit-for-use and has a high reliability. This is often done through a technology qualification program. An important part of the technology qualification program is to predict the failure rate of the new system in its future operational context. Identifying potential problems and estimating the failure rate at an early stage in the system development process are important owing to the high cost of design modifications later in the development process. This article presents a practical approach to reliability prediction of new subsea systems based on available operational data from similar, known systems from the topside environment and a comparison between the two systems. The application of the approach is illustrated by an example of a subsea pump.