A Reliability-Based Appraisal of the Cultural Challenges of Developing Asset Management Systems in the Energy Industry: A Case of a Leading Player in Argentina

Until alternatives to fossil fuels can be substantially scaled up, Oil & Gas (O&G) energy production will continue to be the main actor as an energy provider to world energy needs. Societies across the globe, hence, will have to coexist with carbon-dependent energy generation for years to come. Because of this, the way energy-related activities are managed becomes of utmost importance to address issues like climate change, air pollution and energy access to millions of people. Due to a much-required need for sustainable growth, energy management is especially relevant for the O&G industry in developing countries, where an important percentage of physical assets have been in operation for many years past their useful life. Energy management and asset management, therefore, have turned into inseparable challenges to be addressed by the industry. Even though managing physical assets is a well-developed discipline of proven effectiveness supported by many years of use in asset-intensive industries, successful performance of Asset Management Systems (AMS) depends not only on structured and methodical approaches, but also on a culture environment which favours and encourages the technical components. To diagnose and incidentally improve the way these elements interact, and based on a combined methodology which applies a group of reliability and decision-making tools, this chapter describes the culture-related challenges that the onshore upstream segment’s asset management sector of a large, integrated Oil & Gas company faces in the process of implementing its AMS. Results show that there is, in fact, a very strong dependency of AMS performance on the cultural environment, both organizational and societal, and that a set of reliability-derived recommendations for improved interaction may be consistently ranked by using structured decision-making techniques.