No abstract

Often companies in the (petro-) chemical industry claim that all possible countermeasures against potential accidents have been taken and therefore accidents are unforeseeable. In this paper we question this statement by analysing the pre-warning signals (precursors) preceding a number of industrial accidents. 17 accidents that occurred in the (petro-) chemical industry have been investigated by exploring FACTS, an accident database containing information about industrial accidents worldwide. This paper will demonstrate that the existence of precursor information could have been used to foresee and even prevent these accidents if a proper control action had been initiated. The accidents are analysed further, according to a control model, which was adapted from that of C. Argyris. It demonstrates the ineffectiveness of several elements of business process control loops and that the so-called 'double-loop learning' cycle is more important than the 'single-loop learning' cycle if one considers safety improvement.

For several years it has been tried to make a connection between organisational and technical safety. Researchers have successfully integrated human factors components in accident investigation tools [1] or have developed an elaborate model in which organisational and technical elements are coupled together [2,3]. These approaches are useful for either the organisation that wishes to learn more from accidents or for researchers who are studying connections between two separate worlds of scientific subjects. Management of industries however likes to know firstly its actual safety performance and secondly in what area of safety money should be spent [4,5]. Neither of the tools mentioned is sufficiently equipped to give these answers. TNO has combined a technical risk assessment with an organisational safety assessment. The result is the use of a combination of instruments, techniques and methods that enforce each other and give a company good insight in what the state of safety management is. The outcomes of the different surveys lead to a solid comparison of technological and organisational measures to be taken and serve as a basis for further decision making. The method is tested in a pilot study in a chemical production site. This paper describes the developed methods for organisational safety and the use of it by the case company.

TX 75083-3836, U.S.A., fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractA business case to determine the economic value of deploying subsea intelligent well completions in a subsea development project deepwater West Africa has been developed. Deployment of smart well technology in the base case development of the case field provides an opportunity to develop 20% incremental reserves that would otherwise be uneconomical to develop without the ability to use a multizone completion solution. This results in a 50% gain (risked gain) in NPV for the project. The method is based on an analysis of possible completion failure scenarios, the probability of occurrence of these scenarios and the reliability of the downhole intelligent completion equipment. The cost analysis carried out, weighed the benefit of smart wells against conventional and stacking (commingling of zones) completion types. CAPEX was risked using Decision Tree analysis with data input from a wide range of data bases including fields in the Nigerian DeepWater blocks.