All over the world, every Gas Processing Plant (GPP), either petrochemical plant or chemical plant, has to have what we call a shutdown or a turnaround because after the equipment have worked for a while, there will surely be wear and tear of the equipment or machines and safety considerations that must be looked at.

A proper integrity test must be made so that the gas processing plant will not lose contaminant or leakages easily. The Gas Processing Plant at Atuabo is shut down for maintenance works which is part of the industry practice.

We are told to combat this issue and strengthen the Ghanaian electricity grid infrastructure. The government of Ghana and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) signed the Ghana Power Compact in 2014.

Its goal was to increase electricity access and reliability, while attracting private-sector investment. One of the projects under the Compact aimed to improve the quality and reliability of electricity by constructing additional transformers throughout Ghana. The gas company’s leadership knows whatsoever they’re doing and will be able to meet timelines as scheduled.

Before you shut down a plant, there should be some reasons as to why the shutdown is a must or necessary. A reason that is appealing for a shutting down is that it must be based on technical safety because the gas company is running equipment and the safety of the equipment is key in the energy sector. Inasmuch as we don’t want any further damages to the equipment, they will be exposed to further damages which could be avoided if it is well maintained.

Per the designing of the equipment, they also require that at certain points in time, a shutdown is required to be able to carry out maintenance even if the company is not doing any serious or total shutdown of the equipment. But with regular inspection of the equipment, you would have identified that there is a potential technical safety which when not dealt with can impact on the equipment lifespan, human lives and the environment, hence the shutdown of Ghana National Gas Company’s Gas Processing Plant (GPP) in Atuabo.

In doing this shutdown, there are types of maintenance programmes that ought to be taken into consideration and they include the predictive maintenance, proactive maintenance, protective and reactive maintenance, which many Ghanaians prefer to act to mostly. A company like Ghana National Gas Company will not wait for their equipment to break down before they act but rather will ensure to continue their internal maintenance on their equipment or machines before they go bad.

For Ghana Gas’s environmental policy statement says, the company promote effective waste management strategies by reducing, re-using, recycling and ensuring safe deposal of waste, Operate and maintain our national gas infrastructure in a manner that minimizes emissions to air and discharges to water and land, Again, periodically, evaluate the effectiveness and suitability of the environmental management system to enhance our environmental performance and ensure continual improvement.

For Ghana Gas, once the danger is identified and is able to determine whether it is a potential for harming workers’ lives and damaging the equipment, what we call loss of contentment is experienced. This is because once there is a leakage with any of the vamps, there is that potential that it can go bad at any time. All other area or spotted area can also be seen as a leakage. For instance, even a small leakage to the air coolers – the condensate vamps – will require a total shutdown to prevent further damage to the equipment to resolve it with immediately.

This when observed is the critical reasoning to shut down the GPP. When it happens like that, the gas company takes into consideration those key critical safety issues of the plant and whiles you doing that work, it becomes your critical path of activity in the sense that, it is the most longer timeline activity for you because it drags the entire work.

The shutdown at Ghana Gas was for the young men and women engineers to install Gas Genset #3 new radiator unit, replacement of product Cooler Motor, replacement of Pall rings in the Glycol still column, replacement of all defective cladding on various valves and PPEs at the TDE area, inspection and cleaning of GPP inlet separators and LTS, inspection and cleaning of GPP low pressure flare KO Drums V-730 & D-9202, replacement of leaking pipe on Pentane stripper towner, replacement of product cooler tube bundle and others.

The PSV crew was to inspect, clean and replace AIS and GPP filtration systems, replacement of severely corroded closed drain underground piping and vessels mesh pads and condensate storage tanks A&B cleaning. The electrical crew was to replace the heater pilot system ignition parts assembly, servicing of the heat medium air blower louvre actuator and check or clean all VFDs at MCCs. The GPP shutdown saw the inspection of all mechanical rotating equipment, replacement of GPP 4 Nos Debutanizer reflux condensers severely corroded structure, replacement of Pentane stripper towner internals, removal and installation of debutanizer condenser motors and fan blades.

AMCS mechanical crew serviced all static and rotating equipment, 5000 Hrs servicing of big mainline compressor engine, 4000 Hrs servicing of big Mainline compressors unit, 4000 Hrs servicing of Gas Genset A and B, execution of all outstanding MLE punchilist job and 4000 Hrs servcing of AMCS instrument Air Compressor B.

In such situations, all other works which would have been done to shut down the plant were done which will afford you the opportunity to repair all damages that might have happened to the plant. It is more or less for Ghana Gas to avoid a loss of contentment or linkages which is the safety measure taken into consideration by the gas company. Technical reasons are due to the machines failure that extends to the safety of the workers, the community or environment and the country as a whole.

So therefore, once all these safety measures are put in place, the questions most people would ask is what do Ghana as a country and the gas processing plant stand to benefit? The first beneficiary will be that you have restored the safety confidence and integrity into the system which is the staff or workers working will have a peace of mind to work to their best ability, staff will no longer fear or panic in anyway.

The second beneficiary point will be that you have minimized the down time which means frequent break down of equipment have been prevented since frequent breakdown of equipment will lead to damage of the facility so as you minimized downtime, you will be increasing time. I’m told at the site that the opposite of downtime in a positive way is the uptime. As you reduce the down time, it also minimizes the equipment failure.

The third point – once you have been able to reduce down time – you’re saving cost because to shut down GPP for even a day, is not a joke. The political pressure that comes with the heat in the country and even the company’s image is very vital.

The fourth point is the efficiency which is once you shut down to work on your equipment, you’re prolonging the lifespan of your equipment and finally, the integrity of the company because once the Gas Processing Plant(GPP) is shut down, you minimized that continuous failure, the integrity of the system is well maintained during the shutdown.

These are according to Robert Kofi Lartey, General Manager in charge of Operations.

Shutdown is part of the industry. Acceptance operations where every plant whether it is hydrocarbon or not, after running for some number of hours, there is the need to plan maintenance for most of the equipment. Some of the equipment are in two folds, one is in use and the other is on a standby. Some are just one equipment while some equipment come with inscriptions or advice from the owners, instructing the equipment should be serviced especially the compressors, generators and others.

The specialist owners require that when the equipment run for a period number of hours, you have to shut down to be able to do periodic maintenance. When it comes to Ghana Gas, the GPP runs a lot of static equipment such as pumps, pressure vessels and rotating equipment like motor pumps and these equipment require an amount of maintenance to be carried on them from time-to-time.

For Ghana Gas shutdown, the gas company looks at safety of the equipment, when the equipment can run and when can it be shut down. The GPP of Ghana Gas is also aware that, there are some equipment if you refuse to shut them down, they can lead to loss of containment (that is leakages) which can occur when it runs for some time without a proper maintenance.

Again, at Ghana Gas GPP, before the plants can shutdown, a number of planned activities goes into it because the gas company wants to shut down for a very limited period and within this period the gas company wants to do a proper work to safeguard the equipment that are in operation since the gas company does not want to shut down over a long period of time to affect the national power by creating what we called ‘dumsor’ in the country.

The Operations Department, the Technical Services team to be specific, has a proper plan in place that enables them to know when an equipment can be released from operations to the technical team and a time from which the technical department can service or provide a service for the operations team to be able to use. Note that for Ghana Gas GPP, every equipment at its disposal has certain required days to work or operate on. All these operations will feed into the shutdown maintenance.

The current shutdown process at Atuabo has a duration of 14 days for which the Gas Processing Plant (GPP) will service their pumps, motors, pressure, safety vamps, compressors, generators and other works at the Processing Plant that will sustain it for the future. In the midst of shutdown, the gas company also brings in specialists’ contractors especially with the gas compressors and the generators because of manufactural recommendations.

The company also brings in contractors for a level of inspections in their tanks, vessels, columns since a gas company like Ghana Gas needs these certified API inspectors to inspect the gas tanks, vessels, columns which is based on international standards that fixed into the company’s insurance. The Ghana Gas GPP maintenance team also has a part of the maintenance they undertake which is servicing of the motors, pumps etc. These form a combination of work being done at the company’s Gas Processing Plant (GPP) at Atuabo in the Western Region of Ghana.

Technical Services General Manager Robert Asmah, is full of praise for the fact that the maintenance work is done by indigenized young engineers both men and women following the departure of the Chinese some years back.

“Both our operations engineers have understudied the Chinese very well and they have done a few modifications since the Chinese left and Ghanaians can attest to the fact that the plant is still running,” he revealed.

“Running and maintaining the equipment at the GPP by our engineers won’t be an issue but rather a further in the cap of the brave and intelligent young engineers of the company who have held the fort till now.

“When the Chinese also left, we have had some few shutdowns and our engineers brought it back safely. I think we now have the competency to do that. Nevertheless, there are some equipment or machines that you need to bring in specialists’ contractors to have a second look at it such as the Compressors and Genset.”

Samuel Anan, the Quality Assurance Quality Control (QAQC) Head of Department, tells me engineers have corrected a lot of damages, leakages of the equipment at the GPP which are now in good shape.

“This year’s shutdown has been smooth. If you look at the timelines and the amount of work done now is great and even when we have real plant shutdowns and have days and days preparation sometimes there’re hitches here and there but this one has been smooth,” he noted.

“We have changed a number of vamps and is looking good trust me. The pride of being a Ghanaian and be able to run and manage your own machines or equipment is the motivation that keeps the young engineers at Ghana gas going.”

Annually maintenance shutdown is a perfect time to do a gas shutdown because turnarounds take some time since you would have to do some extensive works at the GPP looking at the proximity to the athletic occasion.

Ghana Gas GPP engineers have assured Ghanaians not to worry since there will not be any cause for alarm such as “dumsor” in the country but rather the current happenings are just to repair and do proper maintenance to the equipment at the Gas Processing Plant (GPP).