Abstract:
The containment barrier is crucial to prevent major accidents on oil and gas installations. The annual number of hydrocarbon leaks is used as an accident precursor indicator for this barrier in the Norwegian oil and gas industry. However, to be able to implement adequately risk reducing measures, monitoring the above precursors is not sufficient: We also have to understand why hydrocarbon leaks occur. This paper presents a study considering causes and contributing factors to hydrocarbon leaks exceeding 0.1 kg/s on all the offshore installations on the Norwegian continental shelf during the period 2008 to 2011. The study is performed by the Norwegian Oil Industry Association on behalf of the operators on the Norwegian continental shelf. It concludes that a substantial part of the hydrocarbon leaks are related to human intervention on process equipment. This is in line with a previous study considering a comparable group of offshore installations during an earlier period of time. We conclude that although the number of hydrocarbon leaks has been reduced significantly during the last decade, the distribution between categories of causes and contributing factors has to large extent remained. Based on this, attention should still be paid on activities and work processes able to support the personnel planning and performing intervention activities, to reduce the probability of human error.
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