Developing an operational dynamic risk assessment model for major accident hazard process safety applications in onshore gas drilling

Abstract

The oil and gas industry relies upon safety barriers to mitigate risk and allow for continual safety in operations. Inadequate safety barriers can lead to severe consequences in the event of a negative incident. Current models for evaluating barrier effectiveness were examined in this work, exploring the hypothesis that there were gaps in available models. This hypothesis assumed that a more effective barrier evaluation approach would be beneficial to consider as opposed to any existing method that would be used in isolation. The importance of this work is defined by the great risk of loss to people and assets that is associated with failed barrier performance. Losses can occur when barriers either fail to perform as expected, or when they are ineffectively chosen as the most appropriate barrier for an application. Therefore, to evaluate when a barrier is most effective is a key step in reducing chance for loss. The fundamental step for identifying the potential performance of a barrier requires a critical action. The action is to identify factors by which to evaluate barrier performance. Such factors were lacking in clarity, and one objective of this work was to rectify this by identifying factors which should be used in evaluating barrier effectiveness.