Learning's from Applying the API Process Safety Incidents (PSI) Metric to Upstream Operations

Abstract

Abstract Catastrophic incidents in the oil and gas industry have the potential to result in serious injury or death to the workers, the public and/or harm to the environment. The desirability of "dual assurance" lagging and leading process safety metrics was strongly communicated in the BP US Refineries Independent Safety Review Panel ("Baker Panel")i and the U.S. Chemical Safety Board iirecommendations on the 2005 BP Texas City refinery explosion. The objectives of industry metrics were to provide an indicator to monitor performance and to set process safety performance targets, drive continuous improvement, and provide a mechanism for useful industry benchmarking. The significant industry guidance for process safety performance monitoring includes: UK Health and Safety Executive: "Step-by-Step Guide to Developing Process Safety Performance Indicators, HSG254", Sudbury, Suffolk, UK, 2006 [Ref. iii] Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS): "Process Safety Leading and Lagging Metrics", American Institute of Chemical Engineers, New York, 2008 [Ref. iv] American Petroleum Institute: "API Guide to Report Process Safety Incidents, Version 1.2", Washington, D.C. 2008 [Ref. v] International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (OGP): "Asset Integrity – the key to managing major incident risks", Report 415, London, UK, 2008 [Ref. vi] In 2007, one company (the "Company") globally adopted a Loss Of Containment (LOC) metric and an enhanced vapor release metric titled Inadvertent Release of Hazardous Vapor/gas (IRHV) based upon the thresholds and definitions within API Guide [Ref. v]. API Guide [Ref. v] was primarily written to facilitate benchmarking of process safety performance among refineries and petrochemical plants.