Safety instrumentation systems offshore

E. M. Marszal, The State of Safety Instrumented System in Offshore Production, Kenxis ... 

E.M. Marszal, Preparing for subsea safety instrumented system,Kenxis Offshore Magazine http //www.offshore-mag.com/articles/print/volume 72/issue 6/departments/ offshoreautomation-solutions/preparing for subsea safety instrumented systems.html. 

This replaces the former UKOOA document Guidelines for Process Control and Safety Systems on Offshore Installations. It was prepared by representatives of EIC, EEMUA, Oil and Gas UK (formerly UKOOA) and HSE and addresses the responsibility and deliverables of organizations involved in the specification, supply, and maintenance of Safety Instrumented Systems. 

Chapter 5 is devoted to safety in offshore oil and gas industry. Some of the topics covered in this chapter are offshore industrial sector risk picture, offshore worker situation awareness concept, offshore industry accident reporting approach, and offshore industry accidents case studies. Chapter 6 is devoted to case studies of oil tanker spill-related accidents, oil tanker spill analysis, and oil spill causes. Chapter 7 presents various important aspects of human factors contribution to accidents in the oil and gas industry and fatalities in the industry. Some of the topics covered in this chapter are human factors that affect safety in general, categorization of accident-related human factors in the industrial sector, categories of human factors accident causation in the oil industry, and recommendations to reduce fatal oil and gas industry incidents. Chapter 8 is devoted to case studies of maintenance influence on major accidents in the oil and gas industry and safety-instrumented systems and their spurious activation in the oil and gas industry. 

These valves are often designed to be operated remotely either by operator action at a panel in a safe location or by an automatic trip system. Similar valves are used on offshore platforms where they are known as ESDVs. Such valves are effectively final elements in a functional safety system and all fall within the same guidelines applicable to safety instrumented systems. 

RP 14C has been criticized as being overkUl and ultraconservative. It has also been challenged as being outdated in a modem world of safety instrumented systems. Such criticisms will likely be addressed as updates are issued (a new edition is currently being prepared). In the meantime, the practice does seem to be effective. Failures in safety systems are rarely, if ever, cited as being a factor in major offshore events. 

Plant emergency is quite a large topic having variations with respect to specific plants. It is hardly possible to cover all these in the limited space of this book. As per the IPL concept, basically, plant emergency is mainly concerned with evacuation. In that sense, ESD is a predictive safety system. From an instrumentation point of view an ESD system is the main system deployed during an emergency and this will be discussed here. Here, only ESD philosophy and general requirements are discussed because specific details of ESD depend on the plant type/facility, for example, the ESD for offshore facilities will be different to that of other plants. 

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