Process Safety - Learning from Upstream Event Data

Abstract

The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) is a global forum in which member companies identify and share best practices to achieve improvements in many areas including upstream process safety. The IOGP Safety Committee has undertaken a multi-year strategic project to focus on fatality prevention, known as Project Safira, which addresses transportation safety, personal safety and process safety. This paper presents data analysis work conducted on process safety and the associated learnings. In 2010, the IOGP started a pilot project to collect upstream process safety event (PSE) data in alignment with the upstream and downstream reporting criteria. Since 2014, an annual quality control and validation review of process safety event data, reported by IOGP member companies, has been undertaken by a group of process safety engineers and data reporting experts. This group has, over a period of years, developed a list of point of releases and refined a set of key words based on the threat lines in a generic PSE bow tie. With five years of PSE data reported by IOGP Member companies, this paper presents the findings from the data analysis process as well as insights and learnings. Submitted Tier 1 narrative descriptions have been analyzed annually, as well as collectively, to determine trends in points of release, category key words, causal factors and chronological patterns in fatal incidents. The results have shown differences in causes related to events with fatal or environmental outcomes. This provides the basis for a standardized industry approach in prevention strategies to eliminate process safety fatal incidents. Having the largest database of upstream process safety performance and fatality data enables analysis of upstream PSE trends and learning that is not possible in individual companies. IOGP is in a unique industry position to encourage international upstream industry collaboration and sharing of industry best practices to prevent process safety incidents, and their potential impact on life, the environment and assets loss.