South Ghawar Producing Department has exerted substantial efforts towards executing a seldom project of replacing numbers of extraordinary vessels. Those horizontal vessels were recommended for replacement due to major and excessive Step Wise Cracking, irregular blister and inclusions identified in several traps. These vessels are subject to Hydrogen Induced Cracking, known as HIC and this is mainly SGPD facilities were constructed on old time where SAES was not mandating to utilize HIC resistance material. In 2014, a company wide survey started and as a result 27 out of 121 were identified with HIC damage. To overcome these challenges, SGPD developed a robust action plan, which consists of two parts:
● Long Term Plan which is replacing the impacted vessels with upgraded material “HIC resistance material”
● Short Term Plan to continue the safe and reliable operation of impacted vessels until the vessels are replaced by managing and monitoring HIC growth.
With the short and long term action plan, SGPD controlled HIC concern in affected vessels. But we didn’t want to stop here and we wanted to go the extra mile and add a proactive measure rather than only reactive. Therefore, we partnered with R&DC to implement a proactive initiative at SGPD as the first department in Saudi Aramco called Step-Wise Hydrogen Induced Cracking Toolkit which falls under IR.4.0.