Major accident prevention illustrated by hydrocarbon leak case studies: A comparison between Brazilian and Norwegian offshore functional petroleum safety regulatory approaches

Abstract

The offshore oil and gas industry still shows difficulties to develop a further improvement in hydrocarbon leak (HCL) prevention. As an initiating event of major accident 1 scenario, an HCL shows potential failures that under slightly circumstances could lead to severe consequences. Once an HCL occurs, there are learning opportunities that can lead to overall safety improvement, but recurrence or similarities between different events challenge the confidence about the completeness of improvement mechanisms and their ability to develop learning. Created after major accidents and broadly used in main offshore provinces, the functional regulatory regime (FRR) assign to companies the risk ownership, a clear mandate to develop all necessary actions on risk control. The main challenges for FRRs make the goals clear among risk owners, to lead conditions to a proper selection of risk constraints, and to support risk control by sustaining a high-risk awareness among all stakeholders. However, an accident shows failures in risk control, despite laws, regulations or other tools designed to avoid it. This article compares the Brazilian and Norwegian oil and gas offshore functional safety regulatory approaches considering the circumstances from selected HCL case studies. Accidental causation models are also considered in the discussion to support the assessment of the case studies' background, the socio-technical interactions, and the regulatory strategies, identifying improvement opportunities for HCL prevention and recurrence avoidance.

Development of a Neuro-Fuzzy System for Assessing Information Management on the Shop Floor

“…The documentary analysis confirmed the role of problems in communication among the causes of the five accidents analyzed, corroborating with [3], [39]. The communication failures identified corroborated with the results of [2], [41], [42].…”

“…On the shop floor, the importance of human information management, considering its interaction with ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), is justified because of the participation of communication problems among causes of accidents, by the need for information to deal with risk situations and the influence of the quality of communication on the engagement and satisfaction of the worker with the organization [10], [38]- [40]. The discussion of accidents in the oil sector, such as the Piper Alpha in 1988, the Montara oil spill in 2009, the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010, and the Gullfaks C accident in 2010, is fruitful for exemplifying the participation of communication in the set of errors that led to accidents [2], [41], [42]. In the cases mentioned above, the reports cite communication failure, flawed decision-making, insufficient communication about changes in the project, missing or poor-quality information, obsolete and inefficient communication processes.…”

Experimental Set-Up for Evaluating Operator Performance through Operations Control Room Simulation in the Oil and Gas Industry

“…Hence, it is still critical to ensure adequate human performance during operation. Human error has contributed to significant accidents in the O&G sector, such as the Piper Alpha explosion in 1988, the Texas City refinery fire in 2005, and the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010 (Almeida and Vinnem 2020).…”

A Critical Review of a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)-Based Explosion Numerical Analysis of Offshore Facilities

“…There are lots of accidental scenarios in the oil and gas industry, but the most devasting accidents are fires and explosions that occur on offshore facilities. The injuries and property damage from an incident of this nature are extreme and can have long-term consequences [1]. The most severe recorded offshore incidents are the Piper Alpha accident, which occurred on 6 July 1988, and the Deepwater Horizon accident which occurred on 20 April 2010.…”