A Collaborative Approach to Root Cause Analysis: With Reference to Suncor Energy Terra Nova Flexible Flowlines and Risers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
One riser and two flowline sections installed in the Suncor Energy Terra Nova riser replacement programme were shown to leak during field tests performed after site installation. No hydrocarbon loss occurred nor was there an environmental incident; however, the scheduled production start-up for the pipes was delayed. The pipes were designed and manufactured to comply with API [1] code and had successfully undergone full-scale factory acceptance testing (FAT) at 1.5 times design pressure following manufacture. Investigations confirmed that the leaks in both pipes occurred due to a crack in the polymer (PVDF) barrier within the end-fitting region of the pipe. It was also concluded that the crack in the barrier in these pipes occurred after completion of the FAT and sometime during the transportation, storage and subsequent installation of the pipes in the field. It was identified that the problem in the barrier resulted from an unknown thermo-mechanical loading condition of the pipe during this period, and also related to specific design features of some components in those end-fittings. The TapRoot Root Cause Analysis (RCA) tool was used to guide the investigation effort and consider all available data. Small and full-scale tests were performed to simulate and understand the end fitting design in the environments and conditions experienced during transport, installation and offshore testing. What is presented here is a brief outline of the incident and details of the subsequent investigation. The investigation was conducted over a period of 18 months with the participation of all parties involved in the design, manufacture, installation and operation of the flexibles. This paper summarises the investigation process followed, documents the results, discusses the results and outlines the conclusions and recommendations arising from this investigation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.017 | 0.048 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.011 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".