Process safety management in the oil and gas industry: lessons from the nuclear power industry and the defence industry

Answer

                           Abstract

The documentation of this paper is done to elaborate on the process safety in the oil and gas industry with respect to the lessons learned from the nuclear power industry and the defense industry. Occupational safety and management is one of the most explored areas in the field of science. Oil and gas industry requires optimum standards of care for the protection of safety and health of their employees, others involved in the industry’s operations, customers, and the general public. Oil and gas industries deal with hazardous products. The petroleum and other oil products are easily inflammable while a gas leakage can cause a shell shocking fire on the premises and the surrounding environment.  These accidental incidences can post a threat to the employees’ safety, environmental degradation and dilapidating business losses.

The risks involved in the oil and gas operations can be sufficiently managed or eliminated where possible. However, appropriate measures have to be taken to eliminate the risks. The nuclear power industry and the defense industry are other examples of industries concerned with hazardous materials. The nuclear power energy, for example, uses radioactive substances that if leak to the environment can cause detrimental mutations to humans and other living organisms. The defense industry also uses nuclear weapons that must be handled with adequate care. The nuclear power and the defense industries have, therefore, developed a set of standards in carrying out their operations. Several accidental incidences have also occurred in the nuclear weapon and defense industries that have impacted on the human and environmental health. An outstanding example is the worst accident in the U.S. history, The Three Mile accident in 1979 where the mechanical damage and human error led to fuel damage release of radioactive byproducts.

The instances have acted as lessons upon which appropriate policies can be developed to avoid a recurrence of the accidents. The policies developed can be used by any other industry handling hazardous materials. The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations maintains a database of the operational experiences and uses these experiences to deduce important lessons. The lessons are then incorporated into the program of the firm.                                                                          

                                                                  Introduction

It is the duty of each industry to ensure the safety of the environment they use to conduct their operations. Environmental safety is a means of ensuring sustained productivity of the industry. Safety measures have to be hastened particularly for the industries dealing in hazardous products. Hazardous products can be physical, mechanical, chemical or even social hazards. Chemical hazards are in particular more dangerous because of their property to easily spread to other localities. Oil and gas industry is an example of industry dealing in chemically hazardous materials. Therefore, their operations should be regulated by standard measures to limit risks incurred by the employees, the environment and other people associated with the industry. The measures also prevent harm to people and the environment from major incidents such as fires, explosions, accidental releases of hazardous substances.

The accidental incidences in the industry require competent employees who can take safety measures whenever appropriate. This review has an objective to determine the risks involved in the oil and gas industry and to analyze the risk management methods that can be used to improve human life quality in the industry. The paper also explores the processes and the standards being developed currently that are customized to the needs of the oil and gas industry.

                                                                       Body

The main industries contributing to accidental environmental hazardous effects include nuclear power, defense and the oil and gas industries. The models of safety are radically different. They represent responses to different economic conditions; each one has its approach to optimization, training, its advantages, and limitations. The process safety and management of these industries require a promptly responsive team because of the unexpected form of their emergencies (Goddard, 2012, April). The main forms of the accidents include an explosion, fires, and smoke release and dispersion (Nolan, 2014). There has been a growing complexity in the process safety management in these industries over the past decades. The complexity is due to the ever-expanding process capacity that has heavily increased the potential for serious accidents. The industrial processes have also grown in complexity (Topie, Buchanan, Madden, & Fagel, 2015). The main goal of process safety management is to develop procedures to prevent unwanted releases that may ignite and cause toxic effects, local fires or massive explosions. Maintaining the integrity of the production process is, therefore, a complex process and the response team should be ready to deal with the emergency situations any time.  The interplay of excellent design, operational safety, and human performance is complex, and the team must identify any cause of default. The accidents also occur without any warning, and this increases the urgency of procuring safety.

Oil spillages can spread across a very long distance if measures to stop the spread are not taken.  Gas transport, for example, requires close supervision because leakages along the pipe can be difficult to determine. A single small crack can enlarge and cause an instantaneous explosion. In the Three Mile Island accident of 1979, for example, an emergency plan was activated to protect the public from significant release of the radioactive byproducts (Constantinides, & Barrett, 2012). Therefore, the response team should be competent enough to protect the public in every emergency.

The risks involved in the nuclear power, defense and the oil and gas industries are great. The employees, people, related to the business activities and the physical environment is at risk of the explosions and spillages from the industries. The lives of the employees are at a high risk hence the necessity to develop the occupational safety management. The risk involved is evaluated on the basis that in the event of the occurrence of the accidents, several lives are lost (Bolotin, & Vasilyeva, 2013). The case fatalities are very high indicating that appropriate care should be taken to prevent the accidents. Those surviving from the accidents sustain overwhelming injuries and cannot proceed with their normal occupational activities. Some of the disabling injuries encountered burns, deafness from the explosive noise and traumatizing physical damages. The victims are also subjected to the social traumatization. The table 1 below shows the fatalities and the number of injuries in the top ten major onshore accidents worldwide in the year 2011.

                     Table 1. Ten major onshore accidents, worldwide (on the basis of fatalities)

The energy industry is described in terms of its major sectors, supply chain concepts, markets, and regulations. Energy management requires access to all the parts of the organization. The nuclear power, defense and the oil and gas industries have similar management structures. The management depends on the structure of the organization and its maturity in process safety management. In these industries, all the managers are responsible in some way for the products or materials. Accountability for energy use is distributed to those who control it. Oil, for instance, those handling the transportation of oil are accountable in case of spillage. The management of the sectors dealing with the above hazardous products is integrated into the overall management structure and process. Leadership is always placed in the hands of individuals or groups, but in the management of such dangerous products, the management is incorporated into the responsibilities of all the managers.

According to the OSHA, employees in nuclear power, defense and the oil or gas industries involved in operating a process or a newly assigned process must be trained in an overview of the process and its operating procedures. It is essential that the training for all the sectors in these industries include an emphasis on the specific safety and health hazards of the process and the materials involved.  The employees are also given skills on emergency operations including shutdown, and other safe job practices revolving around the employee. The employees already conducting activities requiring safety management do not need training. However, refresher training is usually given after every three years to reinforce the understanding of operational safety.

The aviation, nuclear power, the defense and the oil and gas industries Process safety management show similarities in the industry standards, industry self-policing, operational decision making, hazard analysis technique, and certification and training. RTCA body set the standards used by the Federal Aviation Administration as the basis for policy and decision making. The oil regulatory bodies set the standard for the operations around oil distribution and processing. The energy sector conducts training to all the employees involved in all the fields. The training involves the handling of the hazardous materials and products. These industries are limited in their operations and what they can achieve. Nuclear plants, for example, have limited supply capacities to avoid over productions and mismanagements. HAZOP has been widely used in these industries in hazard analysis (Guiying, Bin, Yuanhong, & Branch, 2013). The analysis is passed to operations that guide maintenance and performance audits. The accidents involved in both industries are usually very lethal and survival rates very low in case appropriate management measures are not taken. The aviation industry, oil and gas industry, nuclear plants and the defense industries are involved in handling very dangerous products and oil affiliates. The industries require extensive safety measures to avoid the materials exposure to the environment. The inflammable in the aviation industry include the gasoline product of oil, oil and gas industries involve LPG while nuclear plants use highly explosive radioisotopes and ammonium nitrate. The industries, therefore, employ highly qualified staff in process safety management.

There are several lessons learned from the nuclear power and defense industries that can be used to improve human factors in the oil and gas industries. In the U.S., the NRC analyze operational events worldwide to identify possible lessons for U.S. facilities (Caunhye, Nie & Pokharel, 2012). Nuclear plants are designed and licensed under a defense-in-depth safety approach. Multiple physical barriers are used that protect against accidental radiation release. The plants are enclosed with three barriers that have to be breached for a significant release of the radiation to occur. The oil and gas industry can also use several barriers that will prevent the leakages. The oil tankers and pipes can be sealed and insulated with several barriers such that in case of breakage of one layer, the other intact layers will still protect.

The emergency response plan must be approved by both the NRC and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in all the nuclear plants. The emergency plans are used for arranging for non-nuclear emergencies. The Three Mile Island accident of 1979 elaborated the importance of the defense-depth-safety approach. The explosion was due to both human and mechanical error. However, the response team was activated, and most lives were saved. The nuclear industry conducts peer reviews of plant operations through the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators. The reviews promote success in all the sectors of nuclear safety. The oil and gas industry can also initiate peer review programs to promote inspections and briefing sessions for all its leaders.

The nuclear plants have self-regulatory mechanisms for the employees involved in the energy production process. The staff members are given technical training to act in case of the emergency situations. The training also campuses the skills required to handle the materials involved in nuclear power production. The oil industry can intensify the training of the employees and the refreshers to acquaint them with the knowledge to handle oil.

The oil and gas industry face some challenges in implementing design process as opposed to other industries. The companies in the oil and gas sector deal with their own unique set of risks, whether natural, man-made or operational as part of their daily operations (Murray, Cropper, Chesnaye, & Reilly, 2014). The risks involved in an offshore oil company vary from the risks refineries incur. It is, therefore, a challenge to develop safety management for the industry only but also tailored to the specific company and the sectors in which they operate (Inyang, & Akinyokun, 2014). The oil and gas industry deals with capital operations such as oil distillation that have many latent hazards (Armaroli, & Balzani, 2011). The design may, therefore, be initiated with insufficient knowledge of the hidden risks. The hazards associated with temperature and the flammable products can be expensive to regulate due to the shifts and changes in seasons in different places.

Nuclear plants are distinctively safer ways of energy generation. The nuclear industry is more consistent and occupational accidents are rare but even if they do occur, the fatalities are manageable (World Nuclear Association, 2011). The bar graph below shows occupational, accidental statistics over the last 40 years of nuclear reactor operations in the US and The UK.

Deaths from energy-related accidents per unit of electricity

Source: Paul Scherrer Institut 2012, considering 1968 accidents with more than five fatalities.

One TW.yr is the amount of electricity used by the world in about five month

The table below also shows the proportion of the population affected by the various energy sources as at the year 2011.

                Comparison of accident statistics in primary energy production

The above representations corroborate the fact that nuclear plants have secured consistent safety. The fatalities are minimal while the safety in other energy industries such as oil and gas has variable safety measures that subject workers and the surrounding environment to threat risks.

The energy requirement is currently experiencing a sustained increase. The demand for oil is at an all-time high. It is predicted that by the year 2035, the energy demand in the world would have increased by more than a third (Skalle, Aamodt, & Laumann, 2014). The oil and gas industry is, therefore, challenged to increase the efficiency of its productivity. Increase productivity should be paralleled with improving safety to the workers due to the increased operational capacities (Lutchman, Evans, Maharaj, & Sharma, 2013). The lessons learned from the defense and nuclear energy industries can also be used to formulate the policies for improving process safety management.

According to the Three Miller Island explosion of 1979, the incidences occurred due to both human and mechanical error. The lessons learned were the involvement of the response team and the use of the barrier method to protect the public and workers in cases of the accidents. The oil industries should improve the training of the staff to limit such human errors (Huang, Verma, Chang, Courtney, Lombardi, Brennan, & Perry, 2012). The barrier developed for oil industries include triple layered tankers and pipelines to reduce the risk in case one of the layers crack (Yip, Talley, & Jin, 2011). The lesson of prompt response is also indispensable. The time gap between the occurrence of the accident such as oil spillage or explosions and response should be minimized and reduced as much as possible (Tartakovsky, 2013). The reduction can only be done through proper networking (Ramos, & Veiga, 2011). The oil industries have trained their crew members to make emergency calls in case of accidents (Lv, Huang, Guo, Li, Dai, Wang, & Sun, 2013).  The industry plans to increase the provision of tools that keep people, places, and data connected. Tight internet IP protocols such as advanced LMR systems have been developed to automate field explorations (Habiger, & Beroza, 2015). The oil and gas industry is, therefore, working on a daily basis to improve the safety of its processes.

                                                             Discussion      

Oil and gas industry is a sector that deals with flammable hazardous substances such as petrol and LPG. Detection of defaults in the production, distribution or storage processes is difficult due to the extensive nature of the distribution from one region to another. The nuclear weapons used in wars have posted great risks to human lives, and concrete cautionary measure have been taken to reduce the previously witnessed human life and financial losses. Oil and gas industry have used the previous failures of the nuclear plants to improve its operations. Increased connectivity in oil and gas industry improves decision making and fault detection. The energy industries are currently increasing their data usage to digitalize their production process. The barriers used to transport and store the products increases safety as the hazardous materials cannot come into contact with the external environment.  The results of the work can be used to reduce case fatalities from oil and gas industries by improving barrier method and connectivity.

                                                                Conclusion

The energy sector deals with industries containing hazardous materials. Nuclear plants produce electricity and weapons against terrorists. The hazardous products should be handled with great caution, as such, the employees should be adequately trained to handle the materials, and the industry should prepare an emergency response team. The response team should be ready to work in emergency situations because the accidents come without warning. The standards developed to counter occupational hazards in energy industry include protective barrier methods, early warnings, inspections and peer reviews. The oil and gas industry experiences increased demand over time, and it improves their productivity and safety through responses such as increased connectivity and data usage.

ns