Energy Consulting

How We Help Clients

• Operational Support

  Operational excellence is a key differentiator in the energy industry. You need to bring new production online quickly while maximizing yield and maintaining supply chain integrity. New technologies create both opportunities and challenges.

  Exponent provides engineering and science support to solve your most important and challenging operational questions. From well integrity to flow assurance to failure prevention, we bring the expertise and innovation needed to keep your operations functioning at peak performance — whether your business is focused on traditional oil and gas or newer hydrogen applications. 

  We can also help you avoid containment losses across wells, pipelines, containers, and storage tanks, at refineries and beyond. If a loss does occur, we investigate why the failure occurred and assist with minimizing its impacts to the surrounding community and environment. 

• Risk Assessment 

  Energy production companies have some of the most dispersed infrastructure in the world, spanning continents, oceans, and the broadest range of climate extremes possible. This makes some risks extraordinarily high, yet tolerance for most failures is nearly zero.

  Exponent consultants are published experts across dozens of types of risk, from process safety to corrosion to worker fatigue. We can help you identify and control your most urgent challenges, beginning with assessing your system and establishing an effective tracking and inspection plan. What should be monitored? How? At what frequency?

  Our analyses include both key qualitative elements and real numbers that reflect measurable risk factors. To help prioritize control and mitigation actions, we can help you quantify the magnitude of your risks through services such as event prediction and systems modeling. 

  We are experts at applying the right technical frameworks and risk assessment tools to your circumstances, spanning all areas of operations, including:

  • Failure analysis 
  • Risk and reliability assessment 
  • Inspection practices and procedures to ensure mechanical integrity
    • Reviews of mechanical integrity programs against recognized and generally accepted good engineering practices (RAGAGEP)
    • Positive materials identification (PMI)
  • Process safety management (PSM)
    • Failure modes effects analysis (FMEA)  
    • Fault-tree analysis (FTA)   
    • Hazard identification (HAZID) 
    • Hazard and operability study (HAZOP)  
    • Hierarchy of controls analysis (HCA)  
    • Layers of protection analysis (LOPA)  
    • Management of change (MoC) 
    • Process hazards analysis (PHA)
    • Review of process safety information (PSI) 
  • Human factors analysis (HFA)  
    • Ergonomics
    • Human reliability analysis (HRA)   

• Incident Investigation & Failure Analysis

  Exponent's 50+ years of experience across all manner of catastrophes, from refinery explosions to pipeline failures to worker falls, enable us to provide detailed, actionable insights on why an incident happened — and what can be done to help prevent it from happening again.

  Our experts in thermal sciences, metallurgy, corrosion, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and data sciences examine the evidence of physical causes while our human factors experts determine whether and how actions by the organization or its workers may have contributed to direct, intermediate, or root causes. We can provide in-depth analysis of existing mitigation approaches and suggest improvements to help prevent similar incidents in the future.

   Across dozens of projects involving refineries, petrochemical plants, offshore platforms, and power plants, our failure analyses have included:

  • Boilers
  • Blowout preventers
  • Columns
  • Control rooms
  • Dryers, furnaces, and oxidizers
  • Flaring systems
  • Heat exchangers 
  • Offshore platforms
  • Pressure vessels and reactors
  • Process piping and pipelines 
  • Rotating equipment like pumps or turbines
  • Risers
  • Tank farms and storage tanks
  • Upstream piping like well tubing/casing

• Regulatory & Compliance 

  The energy transition continues to drive changes in regulations for energy production, transportation, and refining activities, which are increasingly moving toward a performance-based approach, making it challenging to keep up. New projects may have different requirements from previous ones. Even ongoing operations can incur new requirements, as large-loss incidents hold the potential to trigger notices of proposed rulemaking and subsequent regulations.

  Exponent's engineers and environmental professionals are well versed in prescriptive- and performance-based regulations. We can help you navigate the regulatory process and stay aligned with national and local regulations in the U.S. and abroad.

  We can also conduct required analyses and assist with responding to investigations by regulators and related entities, including:

  • Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)  

  • Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)  

  • Department of Transportation (DOT)  

    • Including the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA)  

  • Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) 

  • Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) 

  • Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) 

  • Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) 

  • United States Chemical Safety Board (CSB) 

• Environmental & Health Impact 

  Energy production and widespread commitments to reduce the use of fossil fuels are at the forefront of challenges and opportunities for the energy industry. Understanding and managing the impact of your operations on the environment and human health through expert scientific guidance is key to charting the path ahead.

  Our multidisciplinary scientific and engineering teams can give you a clear understanding of how your previous and planned activities may affect the surrounding air, soil, and groundwater. We've conducted significant work related to major spills and ongoing issues such as fracking's impact on groundwater quality.

  Across hundreds of projects for energy companies, we've helped clients: 

  • Conduct ecological and human health studies 
  • Design and deploy water and air monitoring networks 
  • Engineer remediation for existing issues 
  • Guide the safe storage and usage of hazardous substances 
  • Model the dispersion, fate, and transport of pollutants  

• Resiliency & Sustainability 

  The impacts of our changing environment are affecting all industries — but bring an unmatched level of challenge and urgency for energy production companies.

  In the big picture, we help you understand the potential impacts of climate change on your business, now and in the future. How will weather extremes impact operations and infrastructure? How will your customer needs change? How might regulations evolve?

  We create deep, detailed analyses and recommendations for a wide variety of risks.

  Case study

  How Can We Ensure the Integrity of Carbon Injection Wells for Decades to Come?

  Carbon capture and storage (CCS) could help curb climate change. Read how Exponent helped our client perform a risk assessment for their CCS project.

  

• Data-Driven Insights

  Most energy operations are awash in data but lack vital data-driven, actionable insights. A single refinery could have thousands of instruments sending constant data about pressures, temperatures, and flows into its control systems. While the data can signal immediate problems, learning something about long-term performance is also important.

  Our data sciences experts can find the actionable business insights hiding in your data, and we can help you present it to stakeholders in the right reports and dashboards to facilitate effective decision making. 

  For example, do your maintenance schedules align with the temperatures and pressures in your system? If your pipes were designed for sweet crude but are handling sour crude, shorter maintenance intervals are required because the pipes may thin faster.

  For accident and failure analysis, we can provide specific research on signatures in the data that indicate what happened. 

  Thought leadership

  From Data to Decision-Making

  

• Disputes

  Clients come to Exponent when they need to objectively understand what went wrong and why. From large loss fires and explosions to environmental releases, mechanical failures, regulatory violations, contract disputes, nuisance complaints, and class-action lawsuits, we bring a systematic, principled approach to telling you what you need to know — not what you want to hear.  

  Exponent scientists and engineers represent the science at dispute proceedings by bringing clarity, precision, and a unique ability to explain complicated topics in easily understandable ways.

  We offer assistance to energy companies across all phases of disputes, including fact-finding, evidence preservation, site documentation, engineering analysis, pre-litigation, fact-finding, and expert testimony in a variety of dispute resolution settings.