Major Hazards Offshore - Conference Proceedings

Effective risk management on offshore oil and gas installations depends upon a thorough understanding of the characteristics of major hazard events, and the effectiveness of safeguarding systems.

Fire and explosion hazards, and associated safety system performance, continue to be the subject of a number of industry research projects, whose findings were presented and discussed.

In addition, the management systems for communicating this information to the offshore workforce and ensuring effective safety and integrity performance, play a critical role.

Examples of industry best practice are given which take account of learning from past experience, operator fallibility, societal concerns and lifecycle issues.

The key issues discussed were: If the safety case is working so well, why do major accident near misses continue to occur?

Fire calculations by state of the art CFD tools; Implications of changing design criteria on structural integrity management; Assessment of the potential for gas build up based on the 'work book' approach; and Case examples - simulation of fire mitigation in practical safety analysis.