Abstract
Human error remains a major cause of several accidents in the oil and gas (O&G) industry. While human error has been analysed in several industries and has been at the centre of many debates and commentaries, a detailed, systematic and comprehensive analysis of human error in the O&G industry has not yet been conducted. Hence, this report aims to use the Technique for Retrospective and Predictive Analysis of Cognitive Errors (TRACEr) to analyse historical accidents in the O&G industry. The study has reviewed 163 major and/or fatal O&G industry accidents that occurred between 2000 and 2014. The results obtained have shown that the predominant context for errors was internal communication, mostly influenced by factors of perception. Major accident events were crane accidents and falling objects, relating to the most dominant accident type: ‘Struck by’. The main actors in these events were drillers and operators. Generally, TRACEr proved very useful in identifying major task errors. However, the taxonomy was less useful in identifying both equipment errors and errors due to failures in safety critical control barriers and recovery measures. Therefore, a modified version of the tool named Technique for the Retrospective and Predictive Analysis of Cognitive Errors for the Oil and Gas Industry (TRACEr-OGI) was proposed and used. This modified analytical tool was consequently found to be more effective for accident analysis in the O&G industry.
Highlights
In the recent past, human error has been blamed for most of the serious disasters in the oil and gas (O&G) industry
With 91 fatalities all show that poor decisions and human error were at fault
The analysis covered all areas including the context of the incident, operator context and error
Summary
Human error has been blamed for most of the serious disasters in the oil and gas (O&G) industry. With 91 fatalities all show that poor decisions and human error were at fault. Most of these errors were traced to the structure, culture and procedures of the organisation [1]. Lord Cullen’s recommendations following the Piper Alpha explosion and fire in 1988 were the origin of the Offshore Installations (Safety Case) Regulation 1992 which is implemented to reduce the risk of hazards emerging from major accidents on offshore installations [3,4]. The Safety Case regulation required offshore industries in the UK to perform risk assessments for new and existing platforms. A trend of offshore implemented reduce any risk as low is reasonably practical (ALARP)
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