Rather than drowning in paperwork and incrementally developed regulations and inspection schemes, Norwegian oil company Statoil decided on a clean slate. Using a new and comprehensive methodology co-developed with DNV, Statoil assessed the overall technical safety of all its installations, both onshore and offshore.
Says Geir Pettersen Statoil’s safety director, ‘We wanted to map more than hours of absence and numbers of incidents, we wanted the full picture,’ he explains. ‘We needed to know the current status of our entire inventory; but even more importantly we needed to assess the structural and overall safety of each platform’s resistance to major hazards and risks.’
Until now, methodologies for overall technical safety assessment have been hard to come by. The methodology Statoil used in their assessment was carefully put together to reflect all the relevant regulations and international standards as well as Statoil’s own corporate best practices. Says Pettersen, ‘In the process of developing this system, the assistance from DNV helped us tremendously because of its competence and long experience. Also, using someone from the outside is valuable for the objectivity of both the method and the findings.’
Setting the record straight
He explains that in 2000 the Board of Directors decided to set the record straight in response to an on-going safety debate based more on feelings than on facts.
The debate was triggered by a number of Norwegian railway and shipping accidents, resulting in many fatalities. Questions arose about the safety level onboard the many oil and gas installations along Norway’s coast. Reports about a trend of decreasing safety levels, combined with the alleged risks of ageing platforms, needed to be addressed.
The process of gaining experience about ageing installations only began once the ageing was happening, and therefore oil companies now want to have systems in place to learn in detail exactly what hazards/failure mechanisms are directly connected to the platform ageing process.
Safety barriers
One of the the most important factor contributing to safety is the safety systems that function as barriers. If anything should go wrong, safety barriers must be in place and their performance in terms of functionality, integrity and vulnerability is essential to prevent the incident from developing into an accident. This can be described as a second line of defence.
Statoil has identified risks where ‘sleeping’ safety systems might be forgotten in day-to-day operations This includes equipment for fire fighting that is to be used only in actual fires, meaning it is seldom tested full scale. Such systems might lose the everyday battle for attention among all the safety and production systems in daily use. Another objective of the project was therefore to ensure awareness and competence of safety-critical elements and safety systems as lines of defence.
Teams comprising technical specialists from both Statoil and DNV travelled to every single Statoil facility, onshore, offshore and in-between: pipelines, refineries, gas receiving terminals and product depots.
Ranking from A to F
The assessment teams used checklists to rate all the safety systems on each installation. Each safety system was given a grade from A to F, where A represents a perfect system, better than any of the established best practices in the industry. The grade E denotes a non-satisfactory system, and grade F a system not passed.
On average, the Statoil facilities received good grades by the assessors. 14 per cent of the systems were given an E, 25 per cent were given grade D, the minimum acceptable standard, while the remaining achieved good grades, C and above.
Using an ageing platform, Statfjord A, as an example of a typical old installation, grade E was given to some 20% of the safety systems on the platform; some 30% of the systems were acceptable, while the remaining were graded B or C.
The reason why an old platform like Statfjord A does not score higher is because the current accumulated knowledge, and hence regulations and standards, have evolved into substantially safer installation designs. In particular this reflects the fact that this generation of installations is much more enclosed than today.
The safety systems that did not pass the evaluation have been replaced or are in the process of being upgraded or replaced. However, this is only the beginning. From now on, Statoil will continue to carry out assessments according to the established methodology. Every year, one fifth of the technical safety barriers on all Statoil installations will be checked against the performance requirements developed in this project. Consequently, Statoil will have constantly updated information on the overall safety picture on all its installations.
The way ahead
Statoil’s proactive approach effects both Statoil and the rest of the industry. ‘Being as open as we have with regards to the findings, we put pressure on ourselves to fill the gaps that were discovered in this project,’ says Pettersen.
In addition, the awareness of and the use of the methodology are spreading to other players in the oil and gas industry. For example, Norsk Hydro has recently initiated an assessment project based on this methodology, adapted to meet its own needs.
Says Geir Pettersen: ‘DNV will be assisting us also in follow-up work on this project. We want to make the most out of our investments. This means that we have to make sure that the safety level on our older installations is not only in line with laws and regulations, but as good as possible for platforms of up to 20–30 years of age. We will use the methodology and the findings in a scheme where correction of the non-satisfactory conditions will be integrated into our daily work. This will continue the awareness that was heightened during the assessment.’