Risk-Based Analysis and Legislation Study of Offshore Activities

The intensive activities for exploration and exploitation of the oceans, especially the growing demand for hydrocarbons, led to the development of the offshore oil and gas industry during the last decades. The Piper Alpha disaster demonstrated that even when a facility is built to good design standards, catastrophic events can still occur. Thisincident prompted the recognition that exceptional safety performance requires the implementation of a comprehensivesafety management system. Safety management systems provide a holistic approach to safety, addressing not onlytechnical safety requirements, but also organizational and human performance issues such as management, training, documentation, operational procedures, etc. Regulatory trends have been moving away from enforcement of prescriptive requirements and toward performance-based systems. As operators are required to demonstrate theeffectiveness of their safety management measures, the use of risk assessment tools has increased throughout theindustry. On 20th April 2010, an explosion rocked Transocean's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in what has escalatedinto one of the United States' deadliest offshore drilling incidents of the past half-century. After the initial blowout occurred, the leaking wellhead continued to feed the fire onboard the semi-submersible until the rig ultimately collapsed beneath the deep waters of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico on 22nd April 2010. Since 2001, there have been 69 offshore deaths,1,349 injuries and 858 fires and explosions in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the federal Minerals Management Service. The main consequence of the Deepwater Horizon sinking is that oil and gas offshore drillings look more riskythan before especially from the marine environment pollution point of view. Although regulatory requirements which apply to offshore oil and gas development are still quite different from nation to nation, a degree of uniformity is beginning to emerge in the approach operators are taking toward project development, design and risk assessment.Ongoing improvement in the safety of offshore facilities relies upon a union of good regulations and industry codes andstandards. In this paper an overview of progression of risk-based analysis and legislation study of offshore activities will be presented and discussed.

Keywords:

Offshore , Safety , FSA , Risk