The Health and Safety Executive’s (The HSE’s) vision is to gain recognition of health and safety as a corner stone of a civilised society and, with that, to achieve a record of workplace health and safety that leads the world. The Offshore Division (OSD) of The HSE aim is for the UK offshore upstream oil and gas industry to be the safest in the world by 2010.
Since the early 1980s, the UK has been one of the world’s largest producers of offshore oil and gas and there is still potentially as much left to produce as has already been extracted. Undertaking this task are some 250 offshore installations on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS), of which 52 are normally unmanned fixed structures, and over 30 are mobile drilling units. About 24,000 people are directly employed and 300,000 are in related offshore employment.
Britain’s health and safety laws differ from those of most other producing nations in that they consider an installation’s owner or operator to be the primary party on whom legal duties are imposed – the ‘dutyholder’ – rather than the licensee, as in Norway and the US. Thus, in Britain, drilling contractors operating mobile drilling units have equivalent responsibilities to oil- and gas-producing companies.
A key feature of our offshore regulatory regime is the safety case. This concept requires every duty holder to demonstrate, in document form, that proper safety arrangements, including an effective management system, are in place on their installation and that all major accident hazards are effectively controlled. That case for safety must also be accepted by The HSE to permit operations to start or continue.
Safety Performance
Earlier this year, The HSE published provisional offshore injury, ill-health and incident statistics for 2002/2003. They show that the safety performance of the sector remains mixed, although it compares favourably with agriculture and construction, but less so with the onshore chemicals sector and manufacturing.
The steady decline in ‘over three day’ injuries is also matched by a decline in dangerous occurrences (events where workers are not injured but the potential exists). The latter includes hydrocarbon releases, with major releases now in single figures per year for the first time since records began in 1993. This progressive decline should encourage industry and the families of offshore workers that similar gains can be obtained in major injury accidents, which remain at a worrying and unacceptably high rate.
Most of OSD’s resources, both in its science and innovation work and on the front line, go into the major hazards prevention programmes. Since 2000, OSD’s strategy has been to focus effort against high- risk activities in health, occupational safety, and major hazards through project-based programmes aimed at:
- 50% reduction in major and significant hydrocarbon releases;
- 25% reduction in loss of shuttle tanker station keeping events;
- 10% reduction in adverse findings in design safety cases;
- 10% reduction in the rate of injuries and ill-health arising from manual handling operations;
- 15% reduction in reported incidences of slips, trips and falls from height; and
- 15% reduction in reported incidents/dangerous occurrences involving lifting and mechanical handling.
Indications are that most of these targets will be achieved, and OSD’s efforts in this respect have been acknowledged by industry to be the catalyst for the improved performance.
Table 1: UKCS Fatalities/Injuries (with rates per 100,000 employees)
Key Risks
The prevention of fatal accidents is a significant risk for the industry to overcome. These are frequently associated with lifting incidents, either on decks or associated with drilling activity. The HSE inspectors continue to give a high priority to tackling the causesof such incidents. Although no fatalities were reported between April 2002 and March 2003, three deaths have occurred since.
The second key risk concerns installation integrity, mainly structural integrity and particularly hydrocarbon containment.
Despite improvements, major gas releases still occur on a fairly regular basis (though currently down to less than one a month) and a number of enforcement actions by The HSE continue to be taken. Overall, the hydrocarbon leaks programme has been a very effective initiative. However, there are other indications that major hazard risks – such as high-maintenance backlogs, including relating to safety critical plant; inadequate manning levels in high risk activities; infringements of permit to work systems – are not reducing. To address some of these issues, a major new programme was commenced in 2003 to target standards of installation integrity. This is The HSE’s key offshore programme for the next three years.
Category:
Health & Safety
| 
Download PDF
