Last
year the annual conferences and exhibitions of upstream’s two major
societies (the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the Society of
Exploration Geophysicists) were back to back—one a week after the other
causing some consternation in the vendor community which used to have a
few weeks to recover before setting up for the other show. This year
things are even more interesting as the SPE is holding its ATCE in
Amsterdam the same week as the SEG’s event is taking place in Denver. A
couple of years back the two societies agreed to ‘formalize an
agreement for intersociety cooperation to benefit their global
membership through joint events, programs and services.’ I’m not sure
the diary clash is a result of this cooperation or despite it. Aren’t
we all ‘cooperating’ now as we ‘break down the silo walls?’
~
The Society
of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Technical Report ‘Process safety: the
human factor*’ (see page 11) is interesting. The report results from a
two day event that took place in Houston in July 2012. The summit was
organized in response to the US national commission on the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill which ‘set out the need for sweeping reforms that
would accomplish no less than a fundamental transformation of the oil
and gas industry’s safety culture.’ The SPE meet focused on such ‘human
factors’ in process safety with the aim of creating a ‘common
understanding of the strategic challenges for the oil and gas industry,
to identify what is known and unknown in the field, and to explore
actions required to accomplish the needed change.’
Now this is
all very worthy stuff but it raises several questions. The SPE’s
initiative merits further investigation. In fact the authors encourage
organizations to ‘continually assess safety performance and to be
chronically dissatisfied.’ As a chronically dissatisfied sort of a
person I thought that I would offer a few ideas.
Firstly we
don’t know who the attendees at the summit were and so it is not clear
who is authoring the report. It could be that the authors are the top
safety experts from oil companies and their safety system providers,
managers (who may or may not have safety qualifications), petroleum
engineers wanting to learn more or folks interested in having a few
days away from the office. There is a problem of the report’s authority
here.
Next there is
the report’s title. Not so much the ‘human factors’ part (although that
is a bit of a mouthful). Rather the ‘process’ side of the equation. The
report’s focus is not process control system safety per se. It is not
about business process safety per se either. In fact I’m not sure
exactly what safety issues are being addressed here, nor what exactly
is the petroleum engineer’s role in all this? There may be a little
societal scope creep here, I am not sure.
The third
thing is that it is much easier to enumerate problems than fix them.
What would be good would be to hear some examples of how things go
wrong and how safety systems fail. One learning from other safety
conferences that we have reported on is that it is a good idea to ‘walk
the plant’ i.e. for managers, safety and otherwise, to get out in the
field and to see for themselves what is really going on.
The SPE
report advises the industry to seek inspiration in the approach to
safety as practiced in aviation and nuclear power even though recent
developments in aviation and nuclear make one wonder if they are that
much better than oil and gas. The report also has resulted in an SPE
‘human factors’ technical section, website and discussion board. These
may be doubling up on the existing HSE community, although I had a job
navigating the SPE.org website and could not easily evaluate the
different communities.
There is
another organization that does a great job at ‘walking the plant,’
although unfortunately, it does this after an accident has happened.
This is the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB). The CSB considers oil to be
a chemical and considers oil and gas incident investigation to be in
its remit. The CSB investigates major incidents and has just produced
its final report on
the 2010 Tesoro refinery fire in Anacortes Washington. The CSB is to
produce its final report on Deepwater Horizon next month, and we will
of course be providing a summary.
Following its
investigations the CSB produces telling videos that use avatars and
virtual reality to produce what makes for, I confess, very compelling
viewing for the mawkish. But the CSB’s videos are also compelling in a
good way, in that they provide exposure to a range of different ‘human
factor’ related contributions to different incidents.
From my
viewing of a limited number of the CSB’s videos it appears that
accidents are not generally caused by esoteric failings that need fancy
new technology or a ‘process’ change. They are more likely caused by a
failing to apply already well-established minimum industry practices.
Sometimes they are caused by a failure to fix what regulators or
in-house experts have already flagged as dangerous situations.
The Tesoro
report found that the refinery had a ‘long history of frequent leaks
and occasional fires during startups.’ The API specs for the steel used
and for the risk based inspection technology were both ‘written
permissively.’ The CSB found multiple instances in other refineries of
steel failing in similar circumstances.
Other CSB
videos make it clear that if you walk your plant and it looks rusty and
clapped out, it probably is. If you have unfenced installations near
centers of population then kids will likely use them as playgrounds and
may blow themselves up.
Unfortunately,
regulatory capture and pressure from multiple stakeholders to keep old
plant running beyond its safe lifetime, and other ‘human’ not to say
political factors come into play.
* A free download from the SPE.
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