Delivering for Cairn, Bangladesh

Overview
Sangu is the first offshore gas field development in Bangladesh and we are achieving world class results on performance and safety with a predominantly national workforce that had very little gas processing or industry experience prior to the project.

Scope
We are responsible for field management, provision of operations and maintenance personnel, operations and technical support, including asset integrity, management of all surface operations, and implementation of a training and competence assurance programme to continue increasing the percentage of national and regional personnel.

Background
It is estimated that Bangladesh loses $1billion each year in economic output due to unreliable energy supplies, therefore securing a safe and sustainable gas supply is an ongoing urgent priority.

Challenges

• Our main worksite is in a remote location prone to monsoons and severe flooding
• Gas production is a comparatively new industry in Bangladesh, so the available workforce is also relatively new to this type of work
• After ten years of production, the field is in decline and one of the new challenges includes revising operating costs

PSN's approach

• Our site programme embodies PSN’s Core Values and concentrates on key performance indicators
• We share the same building as our customer and have an integrated management team
• We have paid careful attention to selecting the right staff to run the competency assurance programme, so that the right mix of technical skills and behaviours are learned
• We work with service providers to raise their awareness of health, safety, environment and quality assurance, and quality control standards, so expanding our positive impact on the local community, and have rolled out numerous employee awareness programmes including Aids/HIV and avian influenza
• Government-provided social care is limited and unemployment is an issue, so to increase the local labour pool and also reduce some of the strain felt by our existing employees through supporting extended families, we provide financial and practical support to a local hospital and orphanage, a pre-school education programme, a non-formal primary education programme, and an unemployed adolescent project. We hire graduates of the adolescent project through an apprentice training scheme

Achievements

• World class plant uptime and safety performance
• Over 8 million man-hours without a lost time incident
• 10 years without a lost time incident  
• 400 billion cubic feet of production has been achieved with zero LTIs and 99.7% uptime
• Three years recordable case free
• In November 2006 the project team successfully completed a planned shutdown 22 hours ahead of schedule 
• We have project managed the fabrication, installation and successful commissioning of a gas bypass line, and improved production processes at the gas plant, both of which have increased the availability of saleable gas
• Our non-formal education programme provides education for 600 children between the ages of 4 and 8