Offshore Environmental Risk Analysis - An Overview About its Importance in Brazil and Norway

Abstract

Abstract The offshore environmental risk analyzes have been adopted in the environmental licensing processes related to the oil offshore drilling and production, in Brazil and Norway. From recent environmental accidents, especially what happened in Macondo, there is growing concern about consequences of accidents due to oil spills in the marine environment and, consequently, the environmental risk analysis have been gaining special attention of the licensing agencies and operators of offshore oil drilling, production and transportation, including offshore pipelines. This paper presents the development of the offshore environmental risks analyzing methodologies in Norway and Brazil, their applications in these countries, the legal requirements and a parallel between types of data. Quantitative environmental risk analysis has been discussed in Norway since 1990 and has undergone modifications through periodic reviews of the guidance published by the Norwegian Association of Oil Exploration industries (OLF). With regard to Brazil, the government has been discussing this issue since in the late 90's, focusing primarily in the emergency response plans. Since 2008, the environmental licensing agency is developing a Brazilian technical instruction focused on quantitative environmental risk analysis and since the first version of the methodology, it have already been implemented changes to better fit the goals of the results. In a quick review, these methodologies have similarities, but a more detailed study shows that there are crucial points in their approaches that may require greater efforts in preventing accidents by operators. The results of this study show the relevance of the main information used in this type of study and the sensitivity of each method relationships with their most important variables. The importance of the impact of the topics covered in this paper on offshore activities in Brazil and Norway is crucial in decisions making, regarding the growth of these activities in these countries. 1. Introduction The offshore environmental risk analyzes have been adopted in the environmental licensing processes related to the oil offshore drilling and production, in Brazil and Norway. From recent environmental accidents, especially what happened in Macondo, there is growing concern about consequences of accidents due to oil spills in the marine environment and, consequently, the environmental risk analysis have been gaining special attention of the licensing agencies and operators of offshore oil drilling, production and transportation. In Brazil, the concern about accidents due to oil spills in the marine environment has increased since 2000, when the accident caused by a failure in the PE II pipeline of Duque de Caxias, PETROBRAS, in Baia de Guanabara (RJ), caused spill of 1300 tons of oil. 2. Objective This paper presents the development of the offshore environmental risks analyzing methodologies in Norway and Brazil, their applications in these countries, the legal requirements and a parallel between types of data. The objective is to compare what is applied in Norway and in Brazil to try to contribute for the improvement of environmental risk reduction in both countries.