Application of Reliability-Centred Maintenance in a Liquefied Natural Gas Processing Plant in Rivers State

This research applies the Reliability-Centred Maintenance methodology to develop an optimised maintenance programme for critical processing equipment in a liquefied natural gas plant in Rivers State, South South Nigeria. Liquefied natural gas processing plants operate in a high-consequence environment where equipment failures can result in catastrophic safety events, significant production losses, and regulatory penalties, making the rigorous analysis of failure consequences and optimal maintenance strategies an operational imperative. The study follows the seven-step Reliability-Centred Maintenance process, covering system boundary definition, functional analysis, failure mode identification using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, failure consequence classification, and maintenance task selection. The analysis covers four critical equipment systems: gas compressors, heat exchangers, cryogenic pumps, and instrumentation and control systems, incorporating failure data from five years of maintenance records supplemented by expert elicitation for failure modes with insufficient historical data. The resulting maintenance programme replaces a predominantly time-based maintenance schedule with a mixed strategy incorporating condition-based monitoring, predictive maintenance tasks, and revised preventive maintenance intervals proportionate to failure risk. Projected Overall Equipment Effectiveness improvement and maintenance cost reduction from the optimised programme are modelled and quantified. Keywords: Reliability-Centred Maintenance, liquefied natural gas, failure mode analysis, Rivers State, predictive maintenance