Need: A comprehensive study of compressor maintenance data including capital and expense to identify the “drivers” for optimizing maintenance cost expenditures. Anonymous company comparisons which allow individual companies to compare their maintenance expenses to others in the industry, using various methods of normalization. Correlations by linear regression to characterize relationships between expense and various measures of size (deliveries, installed horsepower, horsepower hours, miles/KM of pipeline, capital value, number of units).
Result: This report provides information on the maintenance of compressors for gas transmission. It starts with a survey designed to characterize the pipeline industry’s practice in managing maintenance and recording maintenance data; to gather hard data on maintenance expense and its drivers; and identifies opportunities to optimize maintenance expenditures. The report describes the survey and the goal of each question, then presents the results, which include data on consistency of FERC Form 2 filing practices, availability of hard data, distribution of expenses, budgeting and decision making practices. The assembled responses also include a list of practices which individual companies perceive as unique or especially beneficial; a list of perceived opportunities for controlling or optimizing maintenance and perceived needs for research, products, data, and tools to support future maintenance optimization. Results include regression coefficients and standard errors (which help characterize the relationship), and the inferred slope with its own standard error (which helps quantify the dependence of the expense on these various independent variables). These correlations have included available data for combined O&M and fuel use as expenses
Benefit: This study conducted over numerous years has assembled a number of valuable databases, and the report describes these and the use which the project has made of them. The report also provides various analyses and presentation of maintenance information based on detailed analysis of these data bases. Analysis of company totals, maintenance for individual compressor stations, for individual units, or for different models within the systems of individual companies. A final analysis and supporting documentation is provided that applies data from FERC filings for combined O&M, fuel use and fuel or power cost by station.
