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Reducing the Risk of Low-Probability High-Consequence Events
Abstract
Low-Probability High-Consequence (LPHC) events are accidents that are unexpected, with few similar historical events; however, when they do happen the impact is extreme. With few prior events available to learn from, it can be difficult for a single company or organization to completely understand, manage and fully mitigate the risks involved with LPHC events. This is because they do not have enough learning opportunities to improve their overall risk management performance, and properly address the hazards.
Part of the problem in managing against LPHC events occurring has been the lack of appropriate metrics. While efforts are underway by industry to develop a suite of Process Safety metrics, there is still a gap where Operational Safety is concerned.
The author proposes that the best way to reduce the risks is by working issues at a sector or total industry level, rather than on a company by company basis. At an industry sector level there is greater knowledge and awareness of a larger number of previous events and a broader group of experts to develop industry practices and risk management guidelines.
Examples are given of how successful this concept has been for a specific hazard, then at a national level, and finally in the geophysical sector of the oil and gas industry between the International Association of Geophysical Contractors (IAGC) HSE&S Steering Committee and International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP) Geophysical HSSE Sub-committee, where contractors and operators have worked together on Health, Safety, Security and Environmental (HSSE) issues for a number of years.
The oil and gas industry can improve its overall safety performance for LPHC events by working at a global sector level, or even globally across the industry by better sharing of the right kind of information on incidents. In addition, industry should capture the key aspects and lesson learned in databases that can then be used for several purposes: to drive the development of guidance documents; to help create improved and more consistent risk assessments across industry; to help develop the improved metrics still needed for Operational Safety, and potentially to guide any new regulatory requirements.
To accomplish all of this on a global basis may require the creation of a new industry body. It is worth bearing in mind what occurred in the US after the Three Mile Island nuclear incident. The nuclear power industry was at risk, and it established the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) in 1979, with a mission to "promote the highest levels of safety and reliability - to promote excellence - in the operation of commercial nuclear power plants??. In the 30 years since INPO was established it has built an excellent safety and reliability record, but they are still cognizant of continuing challenges. The best way forward may be to establish a similar but global body for the world-wide oil and gas industry.
... Gas pipelines can rupture during earthquakes and cause gas to leak, which can lead to explosions when the gas concentration near a fire or spark exceeds a certain threshold. An earthquake-blast disaster chain is a low-probability, high-consequence event [12]. Although the probability of an earthquake-blast disaster chain is small, once it occurs, the structure will likely be subjected to loads that far exceed the pre-designed values. ...
Shear wall structures are widely used in civil engineering, and their seismic design has been the focus of much attention. Explosions can result from the rupture and ignition of gas pipelines under seismic action, and there are currently no methods to appropriately assess the damage levels of shear wall structures under such hazard chains. Thus, this study provides a two-stage analysis method for the damage assessment of shear wall structures in an earthquake–blast disaster chain. A damage index of the structure is derived to evaluate the damage state. A 12-story shear wall structure is analyzed numerically to demonstrate the proposed assessment method. The results show that the damage state (DS) of the shear wall structure in an earthquake–blast disaster chain can be increased by one or even two levels when explosive loads are introduced following exposure to seismic actions. Therefore, the earthquake–blast disaster chain has an important impact on the response of shear wall structures and warrants further study to find ways that can better protect such structures against similar disasters.
The oil and gas industry has reduced the fatal accident rate significantly over the last two decades, although in recent years this trend has slowed or stagnated, or in some cases fatalities have even increased. The reasons leading to many of these fatal incidents are not new. Incidents are often repeat events or events that are similar to previous incidents. So, the immediate question to ask is why have companies within the oil and gas industry, despite having investigated and communicated such events extensively, apparently not learned from past events?
This paper discusses and defines what learning means in the context of learning from a past event. It identifies the types of events companies must learn from, namely those with a higher probability of a catastrophic outcome. Having defined these first two points, the paper presents a method that meets the requirements of a learning process. Participants who attend such a learning session are taken through a three-step process, which engages them at different stages. The aim is to let the participants derive the solutions that would have prevented the incident—instead of giving them the outcome of the investigation and the associated lessons learned.
This paper presents a learning process that has been specifically designed to engage front line staff to gain a deeper understanding of lessons learned from past catastrophic or high potential events. The aim is to improve comprehension of what led to these events, to increase the memory retention of what would have prevented the catastrophic outcome, and to gain verbal agreement and commitment from the participants to apply the identified control measures needed to prevent a given event from happening again. This should ultimately lead to achieving further reductions in the fatal accident rate.
Conventional safety performance measurements can be grossly misleading because (1) they are susceptible to deceptive record keeping, and (2) they summarize the past and cannot reliably predict the future. A new system is being tested in a major oil company's Gulf of Mexico drilling operations. This system ignores the usual accident frequency and severity ratios, like the OSHA Recordable Rate or OSHA Lost Time, and employs closely defined standards for evaluating corrective actions from accident reports and other sources. Simple arithmetic then can produce a number ranging from zero to 300 that appears to be a reliable indicator of future safety performance. Testing is in progress to determine how well this system can forecast long-range safety performance for management purposes.
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