Many older assets across oil and gas terminals, pipelines, and processing facilities are running with equipment and components that are obsolete. Obsolescent components can be a risk to safety, reliability and production efficiency. They can lead to unexpected product losses, costly unexpected interruptions to production, increased fugitive emissions and difficult operational decisions, often at short notice.
Changing an obsolete component can force an unplanned shutdown, trigger complicated Management of Change (MoC) processes, and expose you to lengthy lead times – sometimes a year or more. Downtime is lost revenue. In the oil and gas industry, an unscheduled shutdown can mean losses of millions of pounds, euros or dollars per day.
Replacing equipment no longer supported by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) can be expensive. You might be quoted for a full system replacement when all you need is a component repair. Yet with the right engineering approach, effective obsolescence management can turn a potential crisis into a measurable saving.
Obsolescence may be inevitable. But the disruption it causes doesn’t need to be.
The true cost of obsolescence
Equipment is routinely kept in service well beyond its original design life, often because it remains fundamentally sound. Obsolescence is commonly found during routine maintenance when replacement components are required.
For valves, the most common problem areas include:
- The valve stem
- The stem packing
- Trim components
- Gear boxes
- Actuators
From a sample of 22 operators who reported 179 emergency shutdown valve failures to the UK regulator, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), more than 80% of these failures were due to failure to operate correctly. Nearly half of the failed valves had experienced at least one previous failure, with corrosion identified as the most common immediate cause.
Valves and their associated components can become more difficult to operate due to a range of factors, including:
- Internal corrosion
- Erosion
- Age
- Mistreatment by operatives
- Scarring
- Galling
- General wear
- Over-torquing
- Misaligned seals
- Environmental ingress
- Valve leakage
- Environmental ingress
Individually, these problems may appear manageable. Together, they often push operators towards costly and unnecessary full-system replacement. What should be a straightforward replacement becomes complex when the OEM reveals that the needed component is no longer manufactured or the valve and actuator assembly is no longer supported.
At this stage, you have difficult choices to make:
- Stick with the OEM and buy their latest version (assuming the OEM is still in business). That might mean having to pay for a full system replacement just to get the part you need, causing lengthy lead times
- Switch to an alternative supplier for a new replacement system. That can trigger a lengthy and complex MoC documentation process involving detailed risk assessments, design justification, functional equivalence reviews, and multiple layers of approval.
In an unplanned outage, both options consume time you don’t have.
What started as a maintenance issue quickly becomes a business-critical problem, creating unexpected costs, increased exposure to safety risks and operational disruption.
Do you really need to replace the whole system?
In many cases, no.
A valve body may remain structurally sound while an actuator, gearbox, or stem assembly has failed or is no longer supported. Older mounting interfaces may pre-date modern standards. Internal components may have suffered wear and tear. While these issues must be fixed, none of them automatically justify replacing an entire system.
Yet maintenance teams often choose to replace the entire system as OEMs prioritise production of new designs over parts for older designs.
Effective obsolescence management changes the equation. It focuses on preserving what still works, while applying modern engineering standards to address what doesn’t. With the right engineering insight, modern replacements can be designed to integrate safely and compliantly with existing equipment, turning the seemingly impossible into the possible.
What good obsolescence management looks like?
Most operators encounter obsolescence for the first time during a failure. But the greatest value comes from addressing it earlier.
Planned obsolescence assessments help identify high-risk assets before they fail, understand component availability, and prioritise interventions during scheduled outages. This reduces exposure to unplanned downtime and avoids being forced into high-risk, high-cost decisions.
A robust approach starts with functional assessment:
- Which components are critical to operations?
- Which are legacy, but still fit for purpose
- Which no longer meet modern safety or performance standards?
From there on, informed decisions can be made about repair, replacement, or life extension.
Extending the life of existing equipment can deliver better outcomes than wholesale replacement in many cases. Re-engineering can allow old components to be recreated or improved using modern materials, coatings, and manufacturing techniques. Design verification and testing ensure compliance with current standards. Performance can often be enhanced beyond original specifications.
This approach reduces disruption, shortens lead times, limits the scope of change, and avoids unnecessary MoC processes. It also reduces the carbon footprint associated with manufacturing and transporting new equipment.
With the right engineering partner, obsolescence management becomes a strategic advantage rather than an emergency response.
Case study: re-engineering replacement components for hydraulic actuator
Score was tasked with re-engineering a 40-year-old valve and actuator assembly for a 12-inch 600 ball valve installed on the production train of an export gas line. With the valve out of use, the platform’s output was restricted due to the potential loss of the line as a stand-by measure. The longer the valve remained out of service, the greater the risk of supply disruption.
The Score approach
Inspection showed the valve required only a minor refurbishment. However, the actuator had failed in service and was severely damaged, requiring the replacement of multiple components.
List of damage to the actuator and components to replace:
• Piston cylinder
• Piston Rod
• Piston
• End cap
• Inner end cap
• Adjustment screw
• Guide block
• Replacement seals and bushing
The result
An OEM replacement actuator would have taken up to 20 weeks.
Score took just two weeks to design, manufacture, paint, test, assemble and reinstate the replacement actuator, including all soft goods. Restoring operability and avoiding prolonged production risk.
Case study 2: Reverse engineering components saves £ millions
Sphere launcher release fingers were damaged and returned to Score for overhaul. The OEM no longer manufactured the product, and failure would have prevented sphere launching, ultimately forcing platform shutdown and cessation of production. Replacing the fingers would have been impossible without a full system and pipeline change, with long lead times.
The operator faced significant operational challenges. Manual workarounds would have required additional vessel support, increased personnel exposure, extra time for repeated venting down of the launcher, product losses and higher emissions. The loss of two of the release fingers meant the launcher couldn’t hold as many spheres, so more loading operations were required, meaning more vent-down activities.
A tight operational window meant Score had to deliver on time. Missing the deadline would have meant several months of venting down the launcher until a new window occurred.
The Score approach
Score’s engineering team didn’t just remanufacture the components but also assessed the functionality of each one. The operating mechanism was redesigned to reduce wear and eliminate galling. The assessment identified that the assembly didn’t have an anti-blowout feature. Furthermore, under hydrostatic test conditions, the ejection load exceeded the maximum allowed by the actuator, creating a safety risk.
Design modifications were proposed and agreed with the client. The full assembly was remanufactured, CE marked and validated through CFD analysis to determine the maximum side loading imposed on the fingers. Physical testing proved the re-engineered assembly could withstand such loads.
The result
The complete solution was delivered within eight weeks, meeting the shutdown schedule. Obsolete equipment was returned to service. Safety risks were eliminated. Additional emissions associated with temporary workarounds were avoided, and production disruption was prevented.
Conclusion
Obsolescence is unavoidable in ageing assets. What is avoidable is the cost, disruption, and risk that come with reacting too late.
Score has more than 40 years of experience supporting operators with complex engineering challenges. From fast turnaround reverse engineering and design verification to in-house machining, testing, re-certification, and control of MoC documentation, Score helps extend asset life, maintain compliance, and protect production when OEM support ends.
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