A review on Quantitative Risk Assessments for Oil and Gas installations and changes in Risk Evaluation Techniques

Abstract

Oil and gas processing plants are prone to fires, explosions, and loss of containments, gas releases leading to fatalities. Risk management systems must identify, analyze, and control hazards during facility design, construction, and operation. Risk management follows a systematic approach which is based on lesson learned from past incidents and regulatory rules are continually produced, restructured, or amended. The oil and gas sector uses Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) for safety during design, construction, and operation. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview for the general principles and guidelines of risk management system in oil and gas projects. A comparative analysis of Individual risk (IR) criteria and Societal Risk (SR) criteria used by several countries as a measure of tolerable risk. The paper also discusses the future trends in QRA assessment techniques like new methods adopted for integrations of the traditional QRA techniques to include 3D risk modeling through CFD, addition of escalation analysis into risk assessments from domino effects and the recent work towards inclusion of Natech events as part of QRAs.