Abstract
Oil and Gas Pipeline (OGP) projects face a wide range of safety and security Risk Factors (RFs) globally, particularly in the oil and gas producing countries having insecure environment and poor safety records. Inadequate information about the causes of pipeline failures and poor knowledge about the safety and the security of the OGP hinder efforts of mitigating such risks. This paper, therefore, aims to develop a risk management system that is based on a holistic approach of identifying, analysing and ranking the associated RFs, and evaluating the possible Risk Mitigation Methods (RMMs), which are the first steps of this approach. A qualitative document analysis was adopted to design a semi-structured industry-wide questionnaire, which was conducted to collect stakeholders’ perceptions about existing RFs and RMMs for the OGP projects in Iraq. From the survey results, probability and severity levels of the RFs were used as inputs for a computer-based risk analysis model. The model used the fuzzy theory to judge the probability and consequence levels of the RFs and rank them with regards to their degree of impact in the projects. The results revealed that terrorism, official corruption and insecure areas are the most critical risks. Similarly, the RMMs were evaluated based on their degree of efficacy to mitigate the risk in OGP projects. This paper presents a prototype of the risk management system that will be further developed in the next stage of the study.
Highlights
Oil and Gas Pipelines (OGPs) provide a safe and economical mode that transports millions of barrels of petroleum products each day
A list of 30 Risk Factors (RFs) and 12 Risk Mitigation Methods (RMMs) in the oil and gas pipeline projects have been identified based on a comprehensive review of the pipeline failure causes and risk management in the OGP projects worldwide
These findings help in overcoming the problems of the shortage of important data and intelligent information for the potential risk management processes in the OGP projects
Summary
Oil and Gas Pipelines (OGPs) provide a safe and economical mode that transports millions of barrels of petroleum products each day. Despite OGPs being a safe mode of transportation for petroleum products, these projects are still subject to several threats that cause pipe failure if these threats are not effectively managed. OGPs mainly suffer from Third-Party Disruption (TPD); corrosion; planning, design and construction defects; natural hazards; operational errors and unknown causes [1]. OGP projects, must be planned, designed, installed, operated and maintained in ways that comply with safety and security requirements. This is because OGPs have a severe impact on people's lives and projects. The stakeholders of these projects must have a robust risk mitigation system that can keep the RFs at the lowest level, as far as possible
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