Manager-Plant maintenance Mahmood Mirza spoke at the start of the workshop, which was facilitated by Superintendent-Electrical maintenance Andy Doherty along with Thaslim Kaja and K.N.Abdul Jabbar from Power Consultancy U.K. The sessions consisted of two two day workshops held at the training center and a one-day on-site training session at the LSFO Substation.

Bapco Refinery has a fleet of over 300 oil-filled transformers. The continuous availability of these transformers is crucial to the safe and reliable operation of the Refinery’s Power Plant, Oil processing Units, Oil Storage and Export facilities, and ancillary services such as Refinery Clinic, Security Building, Finance & Admin, Maintenance Workshops, Engineering Building, Training Center, Cafeteria and Awali. Many of these essential assets have reached or passed their manufacturer’s stated life expectancy, however such transformers are often still in good condition physically and can often last for decades more.

 Paramount to maintaining transformer long life is a managed program of condition assessment. An essential factor in the condition assessment process is the ability of Maintenance staff to understand the tell-tale signs of aging and degradation of the transformers. Of equal importance is their ability to distinguish the fundamental aspects of corrective, preventive and condition-based maintenance as well as understand the concepts of reliability-centred maintenance when applied to power transformers.

This training workshop was a first for BAPCO in this subject field and the consultants expressed their appreciation of BAPCO’s world class maintenance programs for all its high voltage assets.