Site managers and safety leadership in the offshore oil and gas industry

Management commitment to safety is recognised as a fundamental component of an organisation's safety culture (Reason, 1997. Managing the Risks of Organisational Accidents. Ashgate, Aldershot, UK). However, the role and experiences of site managers in relation to safety have rarely been examined. A survey questionnaire was conducted of 200 Offshore Installation Managers (OIMs) from 157 offshore oil and gas installations belonging to 36 organisations operating on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf. The questionnaire gathered data relating to OIMs' level of experience and style of leadership as well as their knowledge and experience of safety and leadership within the industry. The aims of the study are twofold. The first aim is to investigate the relationship between managers' level of experience and style of leadership with their safety attitudes and behaviour. The second aim is to investigate managers' perceptions of best practice in safety leadership and their beliefs about the key outstanding safety issues. Findings suggest that experience is not the dominant factor in determining leadership style or attitudes to safety, however, the less experienced OIMs and those with more directive styles of leadership were found to overestimate their ability to influence and motivate the workforce. It seems that although managers are aware of best practice in safety leadership, they do not always act in ways consistent with this. They report having considerable difficulty in motivating and controlling some safety crucial aspects of workforce behaviour such as getting workers to accept ownership of safety and getting workers to report near misses. In terms of outstanding safety issues, it appears that improvements still need to be made in a number of areas such as the standardisation of safety culture; the harmonisation of safety practices and procedures across the industry; improved workforce competency and increased workforce involvement in safety activities and decision making.     

Developing safety indicators for preventing offshore oil and gas deepwater drilling blowouts

An important question with respect to the Macondo blowout is whether the accident is a symptom of systemic safety problems in the deepwater drilling industry. An answer to such a question is hard to obtain unless the risk level of the oil and gas (O&G) industry is monitored and evaluated over time. This article presents information and indicators from the Risk Level Project (RNNP) in the Norwegian O&G industry related to safety climate, barriers and undesired incidents, and discusses the relevance for deepwater drilling. The main focus of the major hazard indicators in RNNP is on production installations, whereas only a limited number of incident indicators and barrier indicators are related to mobile drilling units. The number of kicks is an important indicator for the whole drilling industry, because it is an incident with the potential to cause a blowout. Currently, the development and monitoring of safety indicators in the O&G industry seems to be limited to a short list of “accepted” indicators, but there is a need for more extensive monitoring and understanding. This article suggests areas of extensions of the indicators in RNNP for drilling based on experience from the Macondo blowout. The areas are related to schedule and cost, well planning, operational aspects, well incidents, operators’ well response, operational aspects and status of safety critical equipment. Indicators are suggested for some of the areas. For other areas, more research is needed to identify the indicators and their relevance and validity.     

Barrier management in the offshore oil and gas industry

Accident investigations indicate that inadequate barrier management has been a main cause of many accidents in the process industry. In 2013, the Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority issued a barrier management framework for the offshore oil and gas industry. The framework describes principles related to barrier management and may be a valuable guide for the entire process industry. However, the offshore industry faces several challenges when implementing the framework. This paper discusses these challenges and clarifies the central concepts and steps of barrier management. A key message is the need for clarity and integration in a systematic approach to risk and barrier management.     

Inherently safer design in offshore oil and gas projects

Like all hazardous installations, inherently safer design (ISD) is one of the key tools in offshore oil and gas projects to minimize risks in offshore facilities. As the life cycle of offshore facilities is relatively short compared with onshore counterparts and there are many projects running every year, the potential is high for raising inherent safety standards and lowering safety risks throughout the offshore industry as old facilities are phased out. This paper gives an overview of offshore facilities and examples of implementation of ISD. Good examples of ISD are numerous. Industry guidance on ISD implementation abound. Yet, the systematic implementation of it in the industry is patchy. There are many reasons for factors which impede the effective, efficient and consistent implementation of ISD in projects. This paper describes some of them and proposes solution to address them. They include (a) the effective integration of ISD into hazard management systems with appropriate language to engage all disciplines in projects, (b) the phasing of resources to enable the project to capture ISD measures which are only available during early phases, (c) application of appropriate ISD goals and ISD performance metrics at various stages and (d) the appropriate use of quantified risk assessment to support ISD.     

Pedestrian falls: A review of the literature and future research directions

IntroductionPedestrian falls (PFs) – falls in public spaces without collisions with other road users – are a significant cause of serious transport-related injuries, amounting to three-quarters of all pedestrians admitted to hospital.MethodsThis scoping review examined peer-reviewed research on PFs published between 1995 and 2015. Electronic databases (Scopus, SafetyLit, and PubMed) were used to find studies identifying PFs or outdoor falls (the latter also including falls in gardens).ResultsWe identified only 28 studies reporting relevant information on PFs (i.e., 15 prospective, 10 retrospective, and 3 intervention studies). The results show that more walking is related to a lower risk of PFs. Older people, especially older women, have a higher risk of (injurious) PFs. Outdoor fall victims have equally good or better health characteristics and scores on balance tests compared to those who have not experienced such falls. Road factors such as uneven surfaces, busy junctions, stairs, and slippery surfaces seem to play an important role in PFs, but much of the research on these factors is of a qualitative nature.ConclusionsPF victims are generally in good health (apart from normal age-related problems) but at risk due to road factors.Practical applicationsWe recommend to adopt a human factors approach. The road system should be adapted to human capabilities and limitations including those of pedestrians. Measures such as preventing uneven surfaces and good winter maintenance seem to be effective. However, we advise more quantitative research on road factors to inform design guidelines and standards for public space authorities given the qualitative nature of current research on road factors.     

Personality and social networks in organizations: A review and future directions

Recent research linking individuals' personality characteristics to their social networks has brought a new understanding of how individual patterns of behavior affect networks in organizations. This review summarizes the major advancements in the three areas of social network research relevant to organizational behavior: (a) brokerage and structural holes; (b) network centrality and network size; and (c) strength of ties. This review also provides an agenda outlining three key opportunities for future research. These opportunities involve personality and social network change, bidirectional and dyadic processes, and the potential effect of network position on personality expression. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fuzzy risk assessment of oil and gas offshore wells

Risk evaluation of offshore wells is a challenging task, given that much of the available data is highly uncertain and vague, and many of the mechanisms are complex and difficult to understand. Consequently, a systematic approach is required to handle both quantitative and qualitative data as well as means to update existing information when new knowledge and data become available. Each Basic Risk Item (BRI) in a hierarchical framework is expressed as a fuzzy number, which is a combination of the likelihood of a failure event and the associated failure consequence. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to estimate weights required for grouping non-commensurate risk sources. Evidential Reasoning (ER) is employed to incorporate new data for updating existing risk estimates. It is envisaged that the proposed approach could serve as a basis for benchmarking acceptable risks in offshore wells.     

RAM分析技术在海上油气田建设项目中的应用研究

水下生产系统最近几年被广泛用于海洋深水油气田的开发.与传统陆上油气田相比,水下生产系统维护困难,系统故障可能导致更严重后果,能源公司越来越重视水下生产系统的可靠性.总结了可靠性、可用性和可维护性分析技术的基本原理和工作流程,以目前正在建设中的深水油气田开发项目为例,给出了可靠性、可用性和可维护性技术的应用过程,并根据结果优化了基本设计方案,确保了导管架平台与水下生产系统的总体可靠性和可用性,同时从可靠性观点出发,针对设计中的薄弱环节,提出了相应的改进措施,对今后海上油气开发项目的设计的选择和运行维护方案的制定具有一定的指导与借鉴意义.     

A review of the past,present and future of the European loss prevention and safety promotion in the process industries

In 2013, the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) celebrates its 60th anniversary. EFCE has continually promoted scientific collaboration and supported the work of engineers and scientists in thirty European countries. As for its mission statement, EFCE helps European Society to meet its needs through highlighting the role of Chemical Engineering in delivering sustainable processes and products. Within this organizational framework the Loss Prevention Symposium series, organized throughout Europe on behalf of the Loss Prevention Working Party of the EFCE, represents a fruitful tradition covering a time span of forty years. The tri-annual symposium gathers experts and scientists to seek technical improvements and scientific support for a growingly safer industry and quality of life. Following the loss prevention history in this paper, a time perspective on loss prevention and its future is presented.     

Actual safety performance of the Malaysian offshore oil platforms: Correlations between the leading and lagging indicators

IntroductionThis study establishes the correlations between performance of a set of key safety factors and the actual lagging performance of oil platforms in Malaysia, hence the relevance of the key safety factors in evaluating and predicting the safety performance of oil and gas platforms. The key factors are crucial components of a safety performance evaluation framework and each key safety factor corresponds to a list of underlying safety indicators.MethodIn this study, participating industrial practitioners rated the compliance status of each indicator using a numbering system adapted from the traffic light system, based on the actual performance of 10 oil platforms in Malaysia. Safety scores of the platforms were calculated based on the ratings and compared with the actual lagging performance of the platforms. Safety scores of two platforms were compared with the facility status reports' findings of the respective platforms.ResultsThe platforms studied generally had good performance. Total recordable incident rates of the platforms were found to show significant negative correlations with management and work engagement on safety, compliance score for number of incident and near misses, personal safety, and management of change. Lost time injury rates, however, correlated negatively with hazard identification and risk assessment. The safety scores generally agreed with findings of the facility status reports with substandard process containment found as a contributor of hydrocarbon leaks.ConclusionsThis study proves the criterion validity of the safety performance evaluation framework and demonstrates its usability for benchmarking and continuous improvement of safety practices on the Malaysian offshore oil and gas platforms.Practical applicationsThis study reveals the applicability of the framework and the potential of extending safety reporting beyond the few conventional lagging safety performance indicators used. The study also highlights the synergy between correlating safety factors to streamline safety management on offshore platforms.     

Measuring safety climate in aviation: A review and recommendations for the future

This paper reviews 23 studies that have examined safety climate within commercial and military aviation. The safety climate factors identified in the aviation safety climate questionnaires were found to be consistent with the literature examining safety climate in non-aviation high reliability organizations. Therefore, it was concluded that the aviation safety climate tools had some construct validity (the extent to which the questionnaire measures what it is intended to measure). However, the majority of the studies made no attempt to establish the discriminate validity (the ability of the tool to differentiate between organizations or personnel with different levels of safety performance) of the tools. It is recommended that rather than constructing more aviation safety climate questionnaires, researchers should focus on establishing the construct and discriminate validity of existing measures by correlating safety climate with other metrics of safety performance. It is recognized that the accident rate in commercial aviation is too low to provide a sufficiently sensitive measure of safety performance. However, there are other measures of safety performance, collected as part of a company’s Aviation Safety Action Program or Flight Operational Quality Assurance, which could be used to assess the discriminate validity of an aviation safety climate tool.     

Methods and models in process safety and risk management: Past,present and future

The paper reviews past progress in the development of methods and models for process safety and risk management and highlights the present research trends; also it outlines the opinions of the authors regarding the future research direction in the field. Based on the open literature published in the leading journals in the field of safety, risk and reliability, the review covers the evolution of the methods and models developed for process safety and risk management. The methods and models are categorized as qualitative, semi-quantitative, quantitative and hybrid. The progress in the last few decades is discussed in the context of the past. Developments in the current decade formulate the basis of the present trends; future directions for research in these fields are also outlined. The aim of the article is to provide a historical development in this field with respect to the driving forces behind the development. It is expected that it will help researchers and industrial practitioners to gain a better understanding of the existing concepts. At the same time the aim is to provide direction to bridge the existing gaps through research and developments.     

Development of HGAPSO-SVR corrosion prediction approach for offshore oil and gas pipelines

Managing the oil and gas pipelines against corrosion is one of the major challenges of the oil and gas sector because of the complexities associated with the initiation, stabilization, and growth of the corrosion defects. The present research attempts to develop a model for predicting the maximum depth of pitting corrosion in oil and gas pipelines using SVM algorithm. In order to improve the SVM performance, Hybrid PSO and GA was utilized. Monte Carlo simulation was used to determine the time lapse for the pit depth growth. In order to implement the above modeling approaches and to prove their efficiency and accuracy against a large database, a total of 340 data samples for corrosion depth and rate are retrieved from the Iranian Oilfields. The performance of the new algorithm shows that it has higher stability and accuracy. In addition, the forecasting results of the new algorithm are compared with the 11 intelligent optimization algorithms, it shows that the novel hybrid algorithm has higher accuracy, better generalization ability, and stronger robustness. The coefficient of determination (R²) value in the testing phase for SVM-HGAPSO was estimated by 0.99. Proposed hybrid model and Monte-Carlo simulations pitting corrosion based on Poisson square wave process have been used to predict the time evolution of the mean value of the pit depth distribution for different categories of maximum pitting rates (low, moderate, high and sever). The models was validated with 4 field data for each of the pitting corrosion categories and the results agreed well. The pipelines under severe pitting corrosion rate were, more conservatively predicted by HGAPSO-SVR than those under low, moderate and high pitting corrosion rates. The results obtained demonstrate the potentials of this technique for the integrity management of corroded aged pipelines.     

Safety climate and mindful safety practices in the oil and gas industry

IntroductionThe existence of a positive association between safety climate and the safety behavior of sharp-end workers in high-risk organizations is supported by a considerable body of research. Previous research has primarily analyzed two components of safety behavior, namely safety compliance and safety participation. The present study extends previous research by looking into the relationship between safety climate and another component of safety behavior, namely mindful safety practices. Mindful safety practices are defined as the ability to be aware of critical factors in the environment and to act appropriately when dangers arise.MethodRegression analysis was used to examine whether mindful safety practices are, like compliance and participation, promoted by a positive safety climate, in a questionnaire-based study of 5712 sharp-end workers in the oil and gas industry.ResultsThe analysis revealed that a positive safety climate promotes mindful safety practices.ConclusionsThe regression model accounted for roughly 31% of the variance in mindful safety practices. The most important safety climate factor was safety leadership.Practical applicationsThe findings clearly demonstrate that mindful safety practices are highly context-dependent, hence, manageable and susceptible to change. In order to improve safety climate in a direction which is favorable for mindful safety practices, the results demonstrate that it is important to give the fundamental features of safety climate high priority and in particular that of safety leadership.     

Damage to offshore oil and gas facilities following hurricanes Katrina and Rita: An overview

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the centre of the American petrochemical industry, shutting down eight refineries, hundreds of oil-drilling and production platforms, and many other industrial facilities. Furthermore, it triggered unprecedented numbers of hazardous-materials releases from industrial facilities and storage terminals onshore, as well as from oil and gas production facilities offshore in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). In this paper, we analyse the damage caused by the two hurricanes on the offshore oil and gas industry. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused the largest number of destroyed and damaged platforms and pipelines, and the highest number of mobile offshore drilling units set adrift in the history of GoM operations. Following the hurricanes, changes have been proposed to operating and emergency procedures, maintenance requirements, and design practices including mooring practices for mobile offshore drilling units.     

陆上油田油气集输站场安全现状评价探讨

陆上油田油气集输站场安全现状评价的目的是根据该类站场安全管理和设施设备运行现状,查找出生产运行过程中各个系统存在的事故隐患,并提出针对性、技术可行性、经济合理性的安全对策措施建议。本文从安全管理和安全技术方面对油气集输站场安全现状评价的重点、存在的主要隐患、隐患产生的主要原因进行了阐述,对于加强油气集输站场的安全管理、生产过程中的安全运行和隐患治理资金的合理投入具有一定的现实意义。     

Safety compliance and safety climate: A repeated cross-sectional study in the oil and gas industry

IntroductionViolations of safety rules and procedures are commonly identified as a causal factor in accidents in the oil and gas industry. Extensive knowledge on effective management practices related to improved compliance with safety procedures is therefore needed. Previous studies of the causal relationship between safety climate and safety compliance demonstrate that the propensity to act in accordance with prevailing rules and procedures is influenced to a large degree by workers' safety climate. Commonly, the climate measures employed differ from one study to another and identical measures of safety climate are seldom tested repeatedly over extended periods of time. This research gap is addressed in the present study.MethodThe study is based on a survey conducted four times among sharp-end workers of the Norwegian oil and gas industry (N = 31,350). This is done by performing multiple tests (regression analysis) over a period of 7 years of the causal relationship between safety climate and safety compliance. The safety climate measure employed is identical across the 7-year period.ConclusionsTaking all periods together, the employed safety climate model explained roughly 27% of the variance in safety compliance. The causal relationship was found to be stable across the period, thereby increasing the reliability and the predictive validity of the factor structure. The safety climate factor that had the most powerful effect on safety compliance was work pressure.Practical applicationsThe factor structure employed shows high predictive validity and should therefore be relevant to organizations seeking to improve safety in the petroleum sector. The findings should also be relevant to other high-hazard industries where safety rules and procedures constitute a central part of the approach to managing safety.     

石油勘探企业安全现状动态综合评价研究

采用动态监测数据对企业的安全现状开展综合评价,是一种不同于传统安全管理的主动管理模式。该文采用事故原因统计和层次分析相结合的方法,对石油野外勘探企业生产过程中统计的行为性和非行为性隐患数据分层、分类处理,确定因素重要程度。运用多指标综合评价理论,建立按企业多发事故类型开展安全现状动态评价的模式。     

A油气田公司安全文化评价指标体系初探

深入研究了国内外学者安全文化与安全文化评价指标体系相关成果,结合油气田企业的安全生产实际,从定量、定性分析两个方面构建了适合A油气田公司安全文化评价体系.同时采用层次分析法确定安全文化评价体系各指标的权重,结合专家定性评价、员工问卷调查、安全生产定量指标多种赋分方式,客观和全面的评价了油气田公司安全文化建设现状.评价结果对指导油气田企业安全文化建设和提升企业安全文化水平具有现实意义.