Remote operation in environmentally sensitive areas: development of early warning indicators

Abstract

Exploration and production of oil and gas in certain sensitive areas such as the Barents Sea and Lofoten is controversial and further expansion depends on the ability to avoid harmful spills. One way of improving the ability to avoid such spills is to use early warning indicators. The objective of the work presented in this paper is to describe and compare strengths and weaknesses of different approaches for the development of early warning indicators. The approaches that have been compared are: safety performance-based methods; risk-based methods; incident-based methods; and resilience-based methods. There are pros and cons with all methods. All methods are very favorable with respect to some characteristics and at the same time very unfavorable to some other characteristics. They are also different in terms of scope and depth of analysis. This suggests that we should be flexible with respect to the choice of methods, and preferably use more than one method. Thus, the main conclusion is that it is favorable to have the possibility to use several different methods for the establishment of early warning indicators.

Keywords:

• early warning indicators
• remote operation
• sensitive areas
• offshore industry

Acknowledgments

This work has been carried out partly within The Research Council of Norway project denoted ‘Building Safety in Petroleum Exploration and Production in the Northern Regions,’ and partly within the EU-FP7 project ‘Early recognition, monitoring and integrated management of emerging, new technology related, risks’ (iNTeg-Risk) under grant agreement No. NMP2-LA-2008-213345. Financial and other support from Eni Norge, The Research Council of Norway, TrygVesta, and the European commission are gratefully acknowledged. This paper represents the opinion of the author, and does not necessarily reflect any position or policy of the above mentioned organizations.

Notes

1. Programmatic performance indicators (PPIs) are indicators that assist in assessing quality and performance of various programs, functions, and activities relating to the safety of the plant (Øien, Utne, and Herrera 2011).

2. Unless a risk analysis (QRA, safety case, etc.) is used as basis, which is the usual case for the HSE method.

3. This refers to the discussion launched by Hopkins (2009). However, it is seen as less of a practical problem.

4. A red triangle is used to symbolize a barrier. Gray node refers to design/construction of the system (hydraulic ring line). Orange nodes cover two main aspects of maintenance that was deficient. Yellow nodes cover maintenance in more detail. (However, recall that Figure 4 is just an extract of the complete influence diagram.)