Page 96 - Hydrocarbon Exploration and Production Second Edition

CHA P T E R 5

Safety and the Environment

Introduction and Commercial Application: Safety and the environment have become
important elements of all parts of the field life cycle, and involve all of the technical
and support functions in an oil company. The Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea
in 1988 triggered a major change in the approach to management of safety within
the industry. Companies recognise that good safety and environmental management
make economic sense and are essential to guaranteeing long-term presence in the
market. Stakeholders, be they governments, non-government organisations (NGOs)
or financing entities will scrutinise the HSE (health, safety and environment)
performance of an operator on a continuous basis.
Many techniques have been developed for management of the safety and
environmental impact of operations, and much science is applied to these areas. The
objective of this section is to demonstrate how HSE concerns can have a significant
impact on all aspects of a field development and subsequent production operations,
and that safety and the environment must be the concern of all employees.

5.1. Safety Culture

One of the leaders in industrial safety management is the chemicals company,
Dupont which has a history of top safety performance going back to the early 20th
century. Initially, the company was a manufacturer of dynamite, hence, safety had a
high priority! The company recognised that good safety performance must start
with management commitment to safety, but that the level of employee commitment
ultimately determines the safety performance. The following diagram expressed
their findings (Figure 5.1).
At point A, despite full management commitment to safety performance, with
low employee commitment to safety, the number of accidents remains high;
employees only follow procedures laid out because they feel they have to. At the
other extreme, point B, when employee commitment is high, the number of
accidents reduces dramatically; employees feel responsible for their own safety as
well as that of their colleagues. Employee commitment to safety is an attitude of
mind rather than a taught discipline, and can be enhanced by training and (less
effectively) incentive schemes.
Safety performance is measured by companies in many different ways. To
benchmark safety performance on an industry wide scale, globally recognised
standards are required. A commonly used method is the recording of the number of
accidents, or lost time incidents (LTI). An LTI is an incident which causes a person to
stay away from work for one or more days. Recordable injury frequency (RIF) is the
number of injuries that require medical treatment per 100 employees.

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