Offshore Safety

The UK government enquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea in 1988 has had a significant impact on working practices and equipment and has helped to improve offshore safety around the world. One result has been the development of a Safety Management System (SMS) which is a method of integrating work practices, and is a form of quality management system. Major oil companies have each developed their own specific SMS, to suit local environments and modes of operation, but the SMS typically addresses the following areas (recommended by the Cullen Enquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster) ... 

Controlling health nsks from rosin (colophony) based solder fluxes How HSE assesses offshore safety cases WASP - Quality assurance for chemical analysis... 

Hurst, N. W., Bellamy, L. J., Wright, M. S. (1992). Research Models of Safety Management of Onshore Major Hazards and Their Application to Offshore Safety. Proceedings of a Conference on Major Hazards Onshore and Offshore. IChemE Symposium Series No. 130. Rugby, UK Institution of Chemical Engineers. 

In practice, all actual safety management programs combine a mix of prescriptive and nonprescrip-tive approaches. For example, many offshore Safety Cases make reference to the API s Recommended Practice 14C, a prescriptive standard. On the other hand, judgment will always be required when prescriptive standards are being applied—no rule or standard can cover every possible situation. It would be invidious to state that one approach is better than the other. 

SEMP (the voluntary standard for offshore safety) is quite prescriptive because it refers to a large number of prescriptive standards. It is also self-regulated, and so is in the bottom left square. 

In addition to the standards bodies described above, there are also various agencies and government bodies that provide information and guidance that can be used by the process risk professional. They include the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and the Center for Offshore Safety (COS). 

The SEMS rule for offshore safety in the U.S. waters is given in Table 8.3. 

In practice, it is likely that the company s own auditors and audit systems will have to be Incorporated into the ISP work, as discussed below. BSEE will not maintain a list of qualified auditors. Instead, an operating company will propose a person, who will then be either accepted or rejected by BOEMRE. The Center for Offshore Safety plays an important role in the assessment of potential ISPs. 

As shown in Figure 19.1, the offshore oil and gas business is especially dependent on contractors— ranging from very large companies all the way to small organizations and individuals. The agency responsible for offshore safety in the United States is the BSEE. This agency has paid particular attention to the management of contractors. Their philosophy is that the responsibility for what takes place offshore lies with the operator and that the operator therefore has to make sure that the contractors work safely and in conformance with the rules. It is up to the operator to ensure that the contractor knows what to do and that all contract workers are properly trained and evaluated. 

Transportation Research Board Special Report 309 Evaluating the Effectiveness of Offshore Safety and Environmental Management Systems, 2012. 

In addition to the developments of this book, other books in the same series have been published. Offshore Safety Management is now in its second edition and focuses on regulations, management systems, and technical issues to do with the offshore oil and gas business. Plant Design and Operations covers detailed topics, as can be seen from the chapter titles. 

The framework for ensuring accountability will have several essential features, which, for example, are present in the Seveso regime and in the U.S., UK, and Norwegian regimes for offshore safety discussed in this book ... 

I Drobak, J. (ed.) (2006) Norms and the Law. Cambridge University Press Cambridge and Lindpe, P. and Engen, O. (2012) Offshore safety regimes A contested terrain . Presentation at the Working on Safety Conference (September 11-14, 2012) Sopot, Poland. 

Mearns. K., Flin, R., Fleming, M. and Gordon, R. (1997) Human and Organisational Factors in Offshore Safety. OTH 87 543. HSE Books Suffolk. 

Mearns, K., Rundmo, T., Gordon, R. and Fleming, M. (2004) Evaluation of psychosocial and organizational factors in offshore safety a comparative study . Journal of Risk Research, 7 (5) 545 56r. 

Helge Ryggvik (Chapter 15 in this volume) notes that the number of offshore inspections in the Gulf of Mexico has dropped from the peak of 7,000 in 1994 to approximately 5,000 in 2009. Shortly before the fatal Deepwater Horizon accident, Ry ik had the opportunity to meet with Troy Trosclair, at the time the leader of all offshore safety inspectors in the Gulf of Mexico, whom Ry ik found to be frustrated because he felt he was [at the time] under pressure to reduce the number of inspections on offshore installations (Chapter 15). 

Burgoyne, J.H. (1980) Offshore Safety Report of the Committee. Report by Chairman Dr. ]. H. Burgoyne, Cmnd. 7866, HMSO London (hereinafter, Burgoyne Committee). The events and responses surrounding the Ekofisk Bravo blowout are beyond the scope of this work. For further discussion on this, see Chapter 6 in this volume. 

First, from a legal perspective, the endeavour to improve offshore safety involves two major players the state and the industry - or the operator in the individual ease. 

On the formal level, the offshore safety regulations comprise (1) statutes and (2) decrees and regulations issued pursuant to each of the statutes (or pursuant to several of them in combination). 

Petroleum activities combine elements from various other activities. There are elements of industrial as well as maritime operations, and there are aspects of working environment as well as external environmental issues of pollution, to take just a few examples. Each of these aspects often carries with it a separate piece of legislation. For this reason, there is no single statute that exclusively regulates safety aspects of the petroleum activities. At least four distinctly different statutes are relevant for offshore safety ... 

Specific risk factors relevant also in the petroleum industry are covered by separate pieces of legislation, such as the 1929 Electrical Supervision AcE and the 2002 Fire and Explosion Protection AcV° Also, because health issues may well have an impact on safety level, the specific health legislation is relevant to offshore safety. A total of six health-related acts thus form part of the basis for the detailed safety regulations (see further in Subsection 5.4.1). ... 

The basic legal framework for offshore safety is laid down in the Royal Decree 12 February 2010 relating to health, safety and environment in the petroleum activities and at certain onshore faeilities (the Framework Regulations). Pursuant to... 

The Framework Regulations provides exactly that a framework for the offshore safety regulation. It defines the common scope of application for all the regulations, their common purpose and definitions, who is to be responsible for complying with all the regulations, and the common main principles for health, safety and environment, including what is labelled health, safety and environment culture (Sect. 15). Within this framework, the four regulations spell out in some detail what is required in each of the specific areas. 

---