Page 178 - Offshore Electrical Engineering Manual

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CHAPTER

Process Control and 15

Monitoring Systems

INTRODUCTION

In the times before Piper Alpha, process control and safety systems were designed on
the basis of a tick box exercise as described in API RP 14C. This changed following
the disaster and resulting public inquiry. The Cullen Report highlighted a number of
failings in the existing safety regime for the offshore oil industry. ‘Much of today’s
offshore regulatory regime is a direct legacy of Piper Alpha. The HSE assumed
responsibility for regulating the industry, and four new sets of regulations were
introduced, including the Offshore Installations (Safety Representatives and Safety
Committees) Regulations and the Offshore Installations (Safety Case) Regulations’
(Allen, B., Lessons to learn from the Piper Alpha disaster (Online)). ‘The Offshore
Installations (Safety Case) Regulations came into force in 1992. By November 1993
a safety case for every installation had been submitted to the HSE and by November
1995 all had had their safety case accepted by the HSE’ (Oil & Gas UK, 2008). The
Safety Case Regulations (SCR) have been revised in 2005 and again in 2015. The
objective of the revisions was to improve the effectiveness of the regulations in light
of experience, reflecting the new philosophy of the safety case being a living docu-
ment, subject to continual revue and revision.
Now all fixed and mobile offshore installations in the UK sector of the North Sea
must have a Safety Case produced in accordance with SI 2015 398, The Offshore
Installations (Offshore Safety Directive) (Safety Case etc.), Regulations 2015. This
is the UK implementation of directive 2013/30/EU of the European Parliament
and of the Council of 12 June 2013 on safety of offshore oil and gas operations
and amending Directive 2004/35/EC. These legislative documents cover the basic
requirements for the design, operation, maintenance and removal of offshore oil and
gas installations to minimise risk to the personnel involved in their operation and the
surrounding environment. They advocate a holistic approach to whole life design,
installation, commissioning, operation, maintenance, modification, decommission-
ing and removal of all types of offshore installation based on continuous hazard
analysis to ensure that the risk to personnel and the environment is kept as low as is
reasonably practicable.
In order to implement this safety philosophy the installation must be considered
as a whole, not as a collection of separate stand-alone systems or pieces of equipment
as changes to any item on the installation will affect the performance of other parts
of the installation. One way to appreciate this is to use the paper envelope analogy;
the basic support structure for the installation is protected by design and in the case

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