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    Rig Safety Case Notes - Sep2021

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    Paul Belliss
    The document discusses key aspects that should be addressed in a safety case for small drilling rigs, including compliance, major hazard assessment, fire/explosion risk analysis, escape/evacuation/rescue analysis, quantitative risk assessment, and demonstration that risk is as low as reasonably practicable. It notes that while companies cannot claim direct compliance with the EU Offshore Safety Directive, they can demonstrate alignment with its aspects. The document criticizes the adequacy of analysis of major hazards like blowout, fire/explosion risk, escape arrangements, and identification of risk reduction measures in safety cases. It emphasizes that demonstration of risk being tolerable and identification of safety critical elements and equipment is particularly important.

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    Rig Safety Case Notes - Sep2021

    Uploaded by

    Paul Belliss
    51 views2 pages
    The document discusses key aspects that should be addressed in a safety case for small drilling rigs, including compliance, major hazard assessment, fire/explosion risk analysis, escape/evacuation/rescue analysis, quantitative risk assessment, and demonstration that risk is as low as reasonably practicable. It notes that while companies cannot claim direct compliance with the EU Offshore Safety Directive, they can demonstrate alignment with its aspects. The document criticizes the adequacy of analysis of major hazards like blowout, fire/explosion risk, escape arrangements, and identification of risk reduction measures in safety cases. It emphasizes that demonstration of risk being tolerable and identification of safety critical elements and equipment is particularly important.

    Original Description:

    Some notes relating to Safety Cases for small drilling rigs

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    The document discusses key aspects that should be addressed in a safety case for small drilling rigs, including compliance, major hazard assessment, fire/explosion risk analysis, escape/evacuation/rescue analysis, quantitative risk assessment, and demonstration that risk is as low as reasonably practicable. It notes that while companies cannot claim direct compliance with the EU Offshore Safety Directive, they can demonstrate alignment with its aspects. The document criticizes the adequacy of analysis of major hazards like blowout, fire/explosion risk, escape arrangements, and identification of risk reduction measures in safety cases. It emphasizes that demonstration of risk being tolerable and identification of safety critical elements and equipment is particularly important.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    51 views2 pages

    Rig Safety Case Notes - Sep2021

    Uploaded by

    Paul Belliss
    The document discusses key aspects that should be addressed in a safety case for small drilling rigs, including compliance, major hazard assessment, fire/explosion risk analysis, escape/evacuation/rescue analysis, quantitative risk assessment, and demonstration that risk is as low as reasonably practicable. It notes that while companies cannot claim direct compliance with the EU Offshore Safety Directive, they can demonstrate alignment with its aspects. The document criticizes the adequacy of analysis of major hazards like blowout, fire/explosion risk, escape arrangements, and identification of risk reduction measures in safety cases. It emphasizes that demonstration of risk being tolerable and identification of safety critical elements and equipment is particularly important.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Safety Cases – Brief Notes re application to small drilling rigs

    Compliance

    The EU Offshore Safety Directive 2013_30 applies to EU nation states – not individual companies.
    Individual EU nation states are required to put their own national legislation, regulations and standards in
    place to comply with the directive. The UK has been a leader in this but other states eg Denmark, Germany,
    Norway have their own different local legislation and regulations.

    An individual company could not legitimately claim compliance with the Directive.

    An individual company can demonstrate alignment with aspects of the Directive eg preparation of a report
    on major hazards, identification of SECEs etc, etc. The form of demonstration should be explicit and
    limited to be credible.

    In my opinion the most suitable basis is compliance with the IADC HSE Case Guidelines. This is the
    international drilling industry standard and HSE Cases to this standard should be generally acceptable in
    all jurisdictions – as is claimed by IADC. In my opinion, the biggest weakness of the IADC guidelines is
    ALARP – discussed later.

    Major Hazards Assessment

    In my opinion the most important scenarios are blowout, ship collision and simultaneous operations.

    MAHRAs should focus on the big issues and be consequence driven.

    FERA

    I have not seen adequate analysis of fire and explosion.

    Important aspects are structural collapse eg of the derrick and failure of the accommodation, and impact
    on EER.

    EERA

    EERA is a critical aspect for small drilling rigs. On the recent Pattison Rig blowout in Oklahoma all personnel
    should have been able to escape but a number of people died due to inadequate escape arrangements.
    The EERA should highlight such vulnerabilities and come up with potential solutions.

    Where rigs do not meet SOLAS guidelines for the number of lifeboats there is potentially significant
    vulnerability.

    This should be addressed in the ALARP assessment.

    Smoke and Gas Ingress

    Again, on a small rig without pressurized accommodation potential smoke and gas ingress potentially
    forcing early evacuation is an important aspect to be assessed.

    QRA

    A simplified approach to QRA has been adopted. This is in general a good thing - there can be too much
    effort wasted on massively detailed but not necessarily reliable QRAs.
    However, for example, to assess blowout risk it has been assumed that all personnel on the rig will be
    fatalities. This is quite inappropriate, no such case has arisen, and a very distorted risk profile is generated.

    ALARP

    The ALARP demonstration is the most critical part of the case to demonstrate that risk is tolerable.

    I have not seen adequate identification of potentially significant risk reduction measures or their
    assessment.

    SECE

    Identification of and definition of performance standards for SECEs is also highly critical to maintain
    control of risk.

    Often large systems are identified when critical equipment and components need to be identified that
    should be the focus of planned maintenance.

    The performance standards prepared do not focus on the critical aspects and are obscured with
    unnecessary detail.

    PRB

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