Oil and gas plants in Victoria, Australia are subject to the Major Hazards Facilities Regulations
administered by Victorian Work Cover Authority. A requirement of those regulations is the preparation
of a safety case which documents a safety management system. There are no explicit regulatory
requirements under the MHF regulations for asset integrity. However included in the regulations are
requirements such as “the operator of a MHF must adopt control measures which eliminate or if it is not
practical to eliminate, which reduce so far as is practicable, risk to health and safety”. The regulations
provide for a goal-setting performance based regime under which the operator defines appropriate
controls for safe operation, evaluates their adequacy for the facility and decides how to implement and
maintain these controls in practice. This paper discusses an evidence based approach to corrosion
management which “reduce risk to health and safety so far as is practicable” for a gas processing and
liquids recovery plant including an offshore platform. The examples of modes of corrosion damage
which require adequate “control measures” include CO2 corrosion, SCC of stainless steel in a severe
marine environment and liquid metal embrittlement of aluminum alloys. The evidence is based on
knowing the possible damage mechanisms and their dependence on process parameters. The “control
measures” include appropriate alloy selection and fabrication to recognized standards, control and
monitoring of key integrity determining parameters to confirm operation is within the design envelope
and inspection where needed to confirm rates of damage accumulation.
Keywords: corrosion, process engineering, gas, liquids processing, risk, control measures