Offshore safety application

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. 

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. 

Although the SEMS rule has legal application only on the United States OCS, an understanding of what it is and how it is applied is pertinent to offshore facilities anywhere in the world because it is representative of offshore Safety Management Systems in general. Also, because many of the major oil companies are U.S.-based, they tend to use American regulations as a basis for aU of their safety work, regardless of location. 

The paucity literature reported on applications of ANNs in marine and offshore safety engineering reflects that the concept of ANNs is still an extremely raw technique to this area. Published research literature providing a step by step explanation of input data identification through network architecture design and output analysis is somewhat sparse. Buxton et al. (1997) applied the techniques of ANNs to statistics of losses of bulk carriers due to fire to determine whether it is of potential value as a predictor of overall risk. More recently, some initial findings based on a feasibility study of using ANN techniques in offshore and maritime safety-based decision support system has been reported (Sii et al. (2000), Wang et al. (2001)). 

The previous seven chapters of this book have demonstrated how much the offshore safety management business has changed and matured in the quarter century since the Piper Alpha accident. Yet, as the Deepwater Horizon and Montara events illustrate, more progress needs to be made, particularly with respect to process and technical safety. The industry has not yet arrived. No doubt ongoing application of the Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS) and safety case techniques will lead to further improvement, yet there may also be a need to make a step change, and to find new ways of improving safety. 

Naturally, the most general statute applicable to offshore petroleum activities is the Petroleum Act ig()6. This act contains several sections on various safety aspects of the activities, covering the whole range from safety for personnel to availability of installations (see further on this in Subsection 5.4.2 (a)). 

The common scope of application for all the regulations is generally defined by reference to Sect. 1-4 of the Petroleum Act, with some adjustments following from the parallel provisions contained in the other acts upon which the decree is based (see Subsection 5.3.1). This implies that the basic criterion is whether the matter in question is petroleum activit , defined in the Petroleum Act as all activities associated with subsea petroleum deposits , and further defined by examples of such activities (Sect. 1-6 (c) and (e)-(i)). We need not go further into this for our purpose it suffices to note that the decree covers all aspects of activities that reasonably can be considered to have such a link to offshore petroleum activities that they may be relevant for safety in that activity, ° including activities related to certain facilities onshore. 

National Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and supporting regulations. A combination of legislation applicable to all industries with additional specific major hazard regulations for the offshore oil and gas industry. Nonmajor hazard legislation is applied offshore on an activity basis. 

Natvig, B., Eide, K. A., Gasen r, J., Huseby, A. B. Isaksen, S. L. 2008. The Natvig measures of component importance in repairable systems applied to an offshore oil and gas production system. Safety, Reliability and Risk Analysis. Theory, Methods and Applications, volume 3. London CRC Press. 2029-2035. 

Aven, T., Vinnem, J.E. and Wiencke, H.S. 2007 A decision framework for risk management, with application to the offshore oil and gas industry. Reliability Engineering System Safety, Volume 92, Issue 4, Pages 433-448. 

Plant includes any machinery, equipment or appliance used at work. Premises include any place, vehicle, vessel, aircraft, hovercraft, installation on land, offshore installation, installation resting on the sea bed or other land covered by water and any tent or movable structure within territorial waters. This definition has been extended by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (Application outside Great Britain) Order 1989 to include North Sea oil rigs etc. 

This recommended practice is intended for application to offshore oil, gas, and sulphur facilities and associated equipment. This includes well drilling, servicing, production, and pipeline facilities and operations that have the potential for creating a safety hazard or significant environmental impact. 

In addition to a few conventional safety considerations (independence of SIS from BPCS, use of redundancy and fault tolerant design, etc., discussed at length in previous chapters) the following points are worth considering as safety issues related to offshore. Risks associated with typical BOP has been presented in Fig. XII/4.1.4-1. Depending on applicability, reader to decide the associated standard for reader s application. 

The HSE internal document Proems safety management systems also identifies principles of process safety management. Although intended for process safety management of offshore installations, many of the principles are equally applicable onshore. Key points are ... 

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