27 Oct Lessons learnt from the energy sector, can they be applied to save a challenged water sector?

A proactive maintenance strategy instead of a reactive one, accountability, as well as a streamlined organisational structure are all invaluable lessons the Southern African public water sector can hopefully learn from the Oil and Gas industry.

Proactive maintenance

As obvious as it sounds, maintenance is a crucial part of any operation, but even more important, is that the correct maintenance plan is followed. In general, maintenance can be divided into two categories; reactive maintenance (also known as run to failure), and proactive maintenance (which can broadly be divided into preventative and predictive maintenance).

The Oil and Gas industry puts an emphasis on ensuring that their maintenance is proactive, this reduces lost product (crude oil and natural gas) and revenue, unexpected plant downtime and deteriorating infrastructure in the medium to long term.

According to the World Bank, approximately 40-45% of the potable water produced by municipalities in Lesotho and South Africa  does not generate revenue (Non Revenue Water). This essentially means close to half of the product they have treated and are selling does not make it to consumers due to ageing infrastructure, pipe leaks and poor maintenance. As a result municipalities lose about R9.9 billion each year. Proactive maintenance could greatly reduce unplanned plant downtime, water losses from deteriorating piping systems and reduce the high percentage of Non Revenue Water, and as a result claw back lost funds.

Streamlined organisational structure

Operations in the Oil and Gas sector are split into upstream, midstream and downstream, namely; exploration, extraction, refining and transportation.

There are various objectives of splitting up these operating into different stages. Firstly, to ensure that the correct people with the necessary technical skillset are chosen for each crucial section of the operations. Secondly, to avoid the age old concept of being a jack of all trades and master of non, which subsequently results in sub par performance in all the downstream and upstream operations.

Perhaps water boards and municipalities could take a page from this book and actively separate the operation and maintenance of water provision infrastructure in order to increase efficiency. An example of this decoupling could be, raw water abstraction operations, water treatment operations, pumping operations, as well as pipeline distribution. While these broad divisions may exist to some extent, greater separation and autonomy as well as independent governance of these operational segments could be beneficial.

Accountability 

In most industries, when a service provider sells a product to a customer, the product is sold based on a pre-agreed specification, whether it be quality, quantity etc. 

In the Oil and Gas industry, end users who purchase various derivatives of processed crude oil and natural gas have a minimum impurity, quality and quantity specification. Based on this agreement they pay a fee and expect no deviation. Failure to deliver the agreed upon specification results in a breach with monetary penalties.

Water boards and municipalities have a specification document, SANS241 which outlines the minimum water quality parameters in terms of microbiological, aesthetic, chemical and physical parameters considered safe for human consumption. In exchange for treating and providing potable water with the minimum requirements according to SANS241, the end user pays a fee, however this contract seems to be quite lopsided in recent times.

The South African government through its latest blue drop report (2022) have shown that “only 40% of water supply systems achieved microbiological water quality compliance and 23% have achieved chemical water quality compliance in the country”. In short, 60% of water supply systems could not treat water to the minimum required microbiological standards and 77% could not treat water to the minimum required chemical standards for safe consumption. Despite this threat to human health, the end user still has to uphold their part of the contract by continuing to pay for substandard water. It is also worth mentioning that the state of wastewater treatment plants and their ability to efficiently treat wastewater paints an even more grim picture as provided again by government in the green drop report. 

Like the Oil and Gas industry, perhaps introducing punitive measures for failure of municipalities to comply with the minimum required standards may cause them to make more of a concerted effort towards providing communities with potable water of acceptable standards.

Similarly, the failure to deliver potable water to communities should be treated with the same brush stroke, however that topic contains more intricacies and probably warrants its own discussion.