By Andreas Falck, Principal Consultant, DNV (www.dnv.com)

The oil and gas industry is the driving business sector in the Norwegian economy. Every year, an enormous amount of money is invested in order to produce even more oil and gas from the Norwegian continental shelf. However, the high development speed, in addition to lack of human and technical resources, may cause many operators to deviate from good risk management. Hence, the major question is if the safety level is high enough?

The common perception is that the oil and gas industry in Norway is among the safest in the world, if not the safest. The focus on safety is high and an important aspect in all projects and operational organisations. Several international publications show, however, that the oil and gas industry in Norway is no safer than comparable industries in other countries. Maybe the country is not the world safety champions after all?

Safety starts on the drawing board

Establishing a safe operational plant is a long process, involving many factors and several parties. A correct and robust design, correct maintenance and operations that comply with the design are of course focal points. However, the main safety level of an installation is established on the drawing board and the main safety level is given as the main concept is defined.

 A well accepted safety principle is the double-barrier principle, which aims to prevent any single error, technical or human, from causing a dangerous situation. The idea is that there must always be two independent barriers preventing any accident. The focus during the project phase is therefore on the design and dimensioning of safety functions and safety barriers.

Safety barriers in this context are typically a containment function, ignition control function, fire protection, escape and evacuation, and so on. These functions and barriers are the backbone of an installation's safety system and are designed based upon technical requirements and operational assumptions and premises.

In order to sustain the safety level, it is therefore very important that the requirements, assumptions and premises are well known by the operational organisation. The established safety level will no longer be valid if the installation's operations do not comply with these premises.

Lack of link between accidents, design and resources

While the projects focus on safety barriers and safety functions, the operational organisations focus on reporting accidents and parameters, such as personal injury and sickness absences. Naturally, these are important issues, but where is the link to the design premises and requirements defined during the design? How do they know that the barriers and safety functions will operate as required in an emergency situation?

 In 2000, Statoil and Hydro started the TTS (Teknisk tilstand sikkerhet/technical state safety) and TST (teknisk sikkerhetstilstand/technical safety state) projects. The purpose of these projects was to discover the status of the safety systems on running installations and define any gaps between this and the system requirements. After evaluating approximately 40 installations, more than 10,000 findings with different criticalities were logged.

This is an enormous amount of findings and the critical issue now is how the oil and gas industry is handling all these findings? One of the challenges is that the amount of HSE-related data reported annually is enormous and the resources to follow them up are limited. It is therefore natural to ask if some companies are focusing on the right areas. It sometimes seems as if cuts in fingers and slippery stairs are being focused on more than factors which prevent major accidents.

Another important factor is how the findings are being followed up. A general approach in the industry is to define actions related to the different gaps and control the status of these actions. Once the actions are terminated, the gaps have been closed. It is very rarely checked whether the defined actions have closed the gap. Even though several actions have been taken, the gap may still exist. This very important part of the safety management control system is lacking in many operational organisations and it may therefore be said that the operators are deviating from good risk management practice. Today, they are instead practising activity management.

Safety risks are found in the details

The oil and gas market is hot, the oil price is high and there is a lack of both human and technical resources. The successful completion of different design or new-building projects is off course affected by these factors making the time aspect very critical.

DNV has been an integrated part of the above mentioned TTS/TST projects and a number of related safety projects. Our experience from Norwegian and international operators shows that a good  safety level often is defined in the details, and that one often has to go deep into the systems in order to find the critical gaps and findings. In a business section characterised by high speed and lack of resources, let’s hope that safety does not become a balancing item.

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This article is number 4 in a series of 12 articles focusing on quality, health, safety, security and environment (QHSSE).