Process Safety in Upstream Oil and Gas

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• Publisher: Wiley-AIChE
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119620143
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Chemical & Biochemical Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The book makes the case for process safety and provides a brief overviews of the upstream industry and of CCPS Risk Based Process Safety. The majority of the book focuses on the concepts of implementing process safety in wells, onshore, offshore, and projects.

Topics include Overview of Upstream Operations; Overview of Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS); Application of RBPS in Drilling, Completions, Work-Overs & Interventions, Application of RBPS in Onshore Production, Application of RBPS in Offshore Production, Application of RBPS to Engineering Design, Installation, and Construction, Future Developments in the Field

1
An Introduction to Process Safety for Upstream

1.1 BACKGROUND

This concept book on the topic of process safety for the upstream oil and gas industry is aimed at both new and experienced members of the upstream industry and for those thinking of transferring to the industry from a downstream or midstream position or another industry. CCPS concept books differ from CCPS guideline books. Concept books are written at an introductory level as compared to guideline books which aim to explain in detail methods that are well developed and accepted by most industry companies. Readers should be able to implement the topic of a guideline book for their specific circumstances. Concept books are shorter and set out sound methods in outline but may not yet be fully embedded by the target audience. They lay the foundation for potential future guideline books addressing individual topics in greater detail.

The term process safety is taken from the CCPS Glossary of Terms, and this and other relevant terms are in the Glossary of this book. It is defined as:

“A disciplined framework for managing the integrity of operating systems and processes handling hazardous substances by applying good design principles, engineering, and operating practices. It deals with the prevention and control of incidents that have the potential to release hazardous materials or energy. Such incidents can cause toxic effects, fire, or explosion and could ultimately result in serious injuries, property damage, lost production, and environmental impact.”

Process safety focuses on loss of containment events that can cause serious harm to people, the environment and to the asset. These are often denoted by the acronym LOPC – Loss of Primary Containment events. It does not explicitly address other causes of major consequence events which might be due to harsh weather, failure of marine systems, transportation, etc., unless these subsequently cause a loss of containment incident. Nor does the definition explicitly mention the consequence of loss of reputation, but most companies consider this as well when ranking risks. The holistic term for all large potential incidents from whatever cause is often “major accident events”.

Fundamental to the topics presented in this book is process safety management using the framework of CCPS Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS) (CCPS, 2007a). This sets out a structure of four pillars and twenty management system elements and is described more fully in Chapter 3. A definition for process safety management systems, also from the CCPS Glossary, is:

“Comprehensive sets of policies, procedures, and practices designed to ensure that barriers to episodic incidents are in place, in use, and effective.”

It is important to differentiate the scope of process safety from personal or occupational safety. Process safety focuses on infrequent or rare events which have severe consequences, compared to personal or occupational safety, which aims to prevent more frequent events with lesser consequences usually limited to a single individual (Figure 1‐1). This book focuses on the former, not the latter. This differentiation is necessary as the required safety solutions and management systems are different. More frequent occupational safety events are typically easier to anticipate and manage than rare process safety ones, which may not be experienced in the lifetime of a single facility. Many historical examples exist where facilities with excellent occupational safety records experienced serious process safety events. Subsequent investigation showed large gaps in managing the potential for major incidents. A well‐known example of this is the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon (National Commission, 2011).

1.2 APPLICABILITY OF PROCESS SAFETY TO UPSTREAM

Some people think that process safety applies only to chemical processes in the downstream sector, because this is where the terminology originated. Process safety

Figure 1-1 Difference between process safety and occupational safety

is the holistic approach to major incidents, their prevention, preparedness for, mitigation of, response to, and restoration from serious releases of hazardous substances or energy from facilities. Process safety applies equally to upstream and downstream.

A loss of containment event can occur in most parts of the upstream production system and operations life cycle. Containment can be lost from a well during drilling, completion, production, workover, intervention or abandonment. It can also be lost from production facilities, whether onshore or offshore, and from any associated storage or transportation. Upstream also covers gas plants and mid‐stream plants (e.g., LNG). LNG facilities are very similar to many downstream facilities.

The term used to describe process safety is called different names in different industries and this may be confusing. In aviation, space and nuclear industries, the term used is system safety. Historically, system safety was used to show how complex systems interact and potentially fail. Offshore, sometimes the term used might be major incident safety, operational integrity, loss prevention, well control, technical safety, operational risk management, or safety and environmental management. The proliferation of terms causes confusion and this book will use the term “process safety”. For reasons of space, this book does not address major incidents due to weather, ship collision or structural failure

In this book, multiple examples of incidents affecting the upstream industry are presented and these show the applicability of process safety to upstream. For example, a well‐known onshore incident is the Pryor Trust incident (summarized in Chapter 4) and for offshore the Piper Alpha incident (summarized in Chapters 3 and 6). Multiple aspects of the RBPS framework are applicable to both incidents and implementation might have contributed to their prevention or mitigation.

1.3 INTENDED AUDIENCE

This book has as its primary intended audience the following potential readers.

• Process safety professionals, project engineers and design engineers, health, safety and environment (HSE) professionals, and other personnel in the upstream industries with process safety responsibilities (such as but not limited to, asset leadership team, project engineers and their managers, design engineers, and safety representatives / professionals)
• Young professionals or newcomers just entering the upstream industry or those transferring from the downstream or midstream industry, or another industry
• Experienced personnel seeking a credible external reference
• Process safety consultants just entering the upstream industry
• Personnel in rig companies, service companies, and supply companies
• Personnel in engineering and construction companies
• Personnel in supply chain and equipment suppliers
• Regulators (both offshore and onshore)
• Informed stakeholders such as potentially affected public

The book is not targeted at operators or maintenance technicians on an upstream installation. However, they should benefit from the application of process safety concepts via the audience listed above, even though they might not read this text themselves. The International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) and Center for Offshore Safety (COS – an entity within API) have several publications addressing process safety, including some targeting process operators and maintenance technicians.

Being on the above list does not imply that those groups are not familiar with process safety concepts, but this book may help using the concepts in a standard manner, with consistent terminology, and with up‐to‐date practices.

1.4 WHY THE READER SHOULD BE INTERESTED

There are good business reasons for applying process safety concepts to upstream operations. The Business Case for Process Safety CCPS (2018) sets out many important benefits beyond impr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• LIST OF TABLES
• LIST OF FIGURES
• ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
• GLOSSARY
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ONLINE MATERIALS ACCOMPANYING THIS BOOKfrontmatter
• PREFACE
• 1 An Introduction to Process Safety for Upstream
• 2 The Upstream Industry
• 3 Overview of Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS)
• 4 Application of Process Safety to Wells
• 5 Application of Process Safety to Onshore Production
• 6 Application of Process Safety to Offshore Production
• 7 Application of Process Safety to Engineering Design, Construction and Installation
• 8 Process Safety: Looking Forward
• REFERENCES
• INDEX
• End User License Agreement