Addressing Dynamic Risk in the Petroleum Industry by Means of Innovative Analysis Solutions

Abstract

The importance of Integrated Operations (IO) is rapidly growing in today's petroleum industry. It is being developed to improve capture of real-time safety barrier data and to process, visualize and share this information for closer onshore-offshore collaboration and expert support. Increased capacity in the communication infrastructure (e.g. via fibre optics) and integration and processing of data from various sources enable more accurate methods of risk analysis that would have been previously considered time- costly. For this reason this study addresses the topic of dynamic approach to risk in an IO context by presenting and integrating advanced techniques of hazard identification and risk assessment, such as: DyPASI (Dynamic Procedure for Atypical Scenarios Identification), DRA (Dynamic Risk Assessment) and the Risk Barometer methodology. DyPASI was developed in the EC project iNTeg-Risk. This technique aims to produce complete and updated HAZID process. Atypical accident scenarios, which by definition are deviating from normal expectations of unwanted events or worst case reference scenarios, are identified through a systematic screening of related emerging risk notions. The DRA method aims to estimate updated expected frequency of accident scenarios by means of Bayesian inference. Real time abnormal situations or incident data are used as new information to update the failure probabilities of the system safety barriers, which necessarily affect the overall scenario frequencies and the related risk picture. The Risk Barometer was developed within the Center for Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry. It aims to continuously monitor specific indicators measuring the status of critical safety barriers and translate them into risk picture changes. Its result is an intuitive graphical representation of the overall risk level in order to support decision makers in daily operations. The description of these techniques will be accompanied by a preliminary application on a generic case-study, in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of such dynamic approach in risk management and prevention of related major accidents.