Over the past 20 years, the oil and gas industry—both onshore and offshore—has improved tenfold in occupational safety performance. Over the same timeframe, the trend in major hazard accident risk also has shown improvement, but not in all regions of the world and not at the same levels of success.
These were some of the findings made by Det Norske Veritas AS in a positioning paper released early last month. The paper, entitled "Enhancing Offshore Safety and Environment Performance," spotlighted six "critical levers" to improve offshore safety and environmental performance above current levels and, in particular, suggested ways to prevent and mitigate major accidents.
Increased focus needed
Among its findings, DNV surmised that an increased focus on major hazard accident risk was needed, but that addressing the situation was difficult given the lack of clear statistics for major hazard accidents. Unlike occupational safety, which is tangible and has a consistent set of measurements that industry uses worldwide, major hazard accidents lack a common set of industry-wide metrics.
"Historical evidence shows that most major accident hazards were caused by a known threat, when technical, human, and/or organizational safeguards were allowed to degrade over time," DNV noted, adding, "Therefore, risk management in offshore operations requires an up-to-date and clear understanding of the current status of all barriers and how they affect risks."
DNV also found that performance-based legislation, backed by independent verification, helps to reduce the occurrence of major accidents. "The Norwegian and UK sectors implemented different legislation regimes after the catastrophic Alexander Kielland event in 1980 and Piper Alpha disaster in 1988," it said. "The offshore safety regime in Norway is based on detailed risk assessments by the operators, with the regulator reviewing and accepting—rather than improving—these before implementation."
Six levers needed
DNV studied the key factors it thought would be needed for improving offshore safety and the management of associated risks.
"The resultant model that has emerged from the study is one of six interconnecting performance levers and dependencies which, if achieved, should improve risks and therefore lessen the probability of a major accident." These levers are as follows:
1. Performance-based regulations. "Performance-based regulation requires a risk-based health, safety, and environmental management system and is deemed fundamental to ensure continuous improvement, innovation, and adaptations to relevant conditions and new risks."
2. Clear roles and responsibilities. Since generally many parties are involved in oil and gas operations, it is "of the utmost importance that all the parties involved clearly understand their roles and responsibilities with regard to safety, and have common goals."
3. Holistic risk approach. Risks relating to any offshore oil and gas operation will be site, operation, and time-specific. "To ensure…a holistic approach to risk management, all parties involved in the activities need to have access to a tool that records up-to-date risk identification and provides a complete view of the risk exposures for an asset, asset cluster, project, or company."
4. Shared performance monitoring. To ensure effective risk management, parties involved in the planning and execution of an offshore operation "must share the same safety performance targets, monitor the same safety conditions, and have a common understanding of the status and effect of nonconformities/deviations."
5. Advanced barrier management. "Investigations into major accidents conclude in most cases that the events which occurred were known risks for which a number of safety measures had been planned and implemented. However the accidents occurred as a result of multiple barrier failures, often in combination with a lack of or inadequate barriers in certain areas."
6. People, process, and plant. Technical systems alone cannot assure safety and environmental performance. "Safe operations are the product of safe and reliable technology, an effective organization and a competent strong management, and motivated people who at all times know the relevant risks, understand their role in managing those risks, and then effectively manage them."
