Industry representatives and others gathered for a 3-day conference in Aberdeen last month to "reflect, review, reinforce, and reenergize" the lessons learned after an explosion on the Piper Alpha oil platform killed 167 workers in the UK North Sea on July 6, 1988.
"There was no sense of this being an industry where health and safety has been cracked," said Judith Hackitt, chairwoman of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), in an HSE blog posting about the mindset at Piper 25.
"In their different ways, everyone spoke about the need to maintain the sense of chronic unease which goes with operating in such a challenging environment—and everyone meant it."
She noted that huge benefits continues to be extracted from the North Sea where the oil and gas is being extracted "using ever-more complex new technologies."
She listed the following key principals:
• Offshore legislation should be goal setting rather than prescriptive.
• Operators are responsible for managing the risks associated with offshore installations.
• Offshore operators proactively demonstrate to the regulator that all major incident risks have been assessed and measures taken to control risks through the submission of a safety case.
• Regulators, operators, and contractors should support and encourage the involvement of the offshore workforce in offshore safety.
The Piper Alpha oil platform explosion was triggered by a gas-condensate leak from pipework (OGJ, July 11, 1988, p. 20). A safety valve had been removed for maintenance when the leak was ignited.
Looking ahead
The greatest homage that can be paid to the past "is to demonstrate that we have learned and are taking those lessons forward," she said.
In a keynote at Piper 25, Hackitt asked industry how it can stay true to abiding principles while adapting to evolving offshore operating scenarios worldwide.
"Aging assets are a key issue," she said. "Many installations are now operating beyond their design life, but we are also seeing new assets and new techniques being deployed. Drilling is taking place in ever deeper water and more hostile environments."
She noted a new European Commission Directive on the safety of offshore oil and gas operations will require offshore operators to take steps to continuously improve how they manage offshore safety.
"Goal-based regimes place the onus on industry to ensure and demonstrate to regulators that the risks of any incident related to oil and gas operations are reduced to ‘as low as reasonable practicable.' We have seen that a more prescriptive approach can shift the burden of responsibility from the operator to the regulator."
Until recently, two key groups of regulators existed. One is the International Regulators Forum, a group of nine regulators of health and safety, including US and UK, in the offshore upstream. The other group is the North Sea Offshore Authorities Forum, formed in 1989 with the goal to ensure continuous improvement in North Sea HSE. It is a collaboration forum for regulatory authorities in countries having North Sea oil and gas activities.
Recently, the European Commission established the European Union Offshore Oil & Gas Authorities Group.
Hackitt said the EC created "a truly European-wide forum for the exchange of experiences and expertise between offshore regulators. The EC will use this forum for discussion on the implementation of the new directive to ensure consistency of approaches, to network with the industry on European-wide issues, and to stimulate continuous improvement—particularly in countries with emerging offshore sectors in the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea. I hope this forum, in time, will be as effective as the others at sharing lessons, knowledge, and experience from a regulator's perspective."