A bowtie model for fuel gas leakage incidents in an FPSO engine room

Abstract

Safety and operational costs are of paramount importance in offshore facilities. Efforts to find new ways to reduce operational costs and minimize risks have led to the development of techniques in the field of safety. Routine checks and equipment maintenance are conducted based on either calendar periods or equipment uptime, using conditional monitoring, to prevent malfunctions through preventive maintenance (PM). PM is a key strategy for ensuring the integrity and process safety of safety barriers in offshore facilities. However, due to challenges in modeling dependencies, determining maintenance intervals, and updating belief in operational data, ineffective safety barriers can occur and lead to incidents. Excessive maintenance can also increase the risk of operational mistakes among workers. This study examines safety and operational issues associated with fuel gas leak events caused by various risk factors in Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) engine rooms using the bow-tie model. Within this context, safety barriers are defined, encompassing both preventive controls and mitigating measures that can be employed to minimize potential risk factors. Furthermore, the study underscores the importance of maintenance intervals for a specific set of safety barriers, necessitating periodic testing using Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) tools for FPSO units.