Managing the Regulatory Requirements

Session Chair:

• Steven V. Petrofes, General Manager - Engineering and Asset Management Projects, Rio Tinto

Session Co-Chair:

• Mohamed Siraj Abdul Razack, Petrofac

Session Description:

The safety case has been the primary tool for offshore regulation in Australia as in the UK following Lord Cullen’s report on the Piper Alpha disaster.   But other countries in the Asia-Pacific use different regulatory tools and implementation of safety cases and similar environment plans is critical. As government agendas for ‘cutting red and green tape’ gather momentum, it is timely to consider the future of the safety case.  The social right to operate has been challenged through offshore accidents like Varanus Island and Montara in Australia (as well as issues associated with coal seam gas onshore on the East Coast) and the Deepwater Horizon Macondo tragedy in the US Gulf of Mexico and community expectations for safety continue to increase in parallel with the world’s increasing need for energy.  A Thai perspective will enrich our understanding of this tension.

Schedule:

The WA Regulator’s Expectations for Managing the Regulatory Requirements’

Simon Ridge, Resources Safety Division, Department of Mines and Petroleum

Western Australia stands at the cusp of a significant opportunity to define the regulatory framework for decades to come. The various pieces of legislation that are currently in place to regulate the Safety Case regime and OHS in the resources sector are all due for review. With a holistic approach significant synergies may be identified and a modern forward looking legislative framework put in place to serve the sector for the future. A Ministerial Advisory Panel (MAP) is in place to consider this great opportunity, what progress has been made and where is WA heading in this space?

The Community Right to Operate

Worachai Puvisitkul, SCG Thailand

The chemicals plants of SCG Chemicals is located in Map-ta-phut Petrochemicals Industrial estate, Rayong Thailand nearby community around.  Past experienced incidents has been occurred from us or neighbor cause impact to community such as evacuation, injured and health problem. Then, the plant operation was stopped running by government for a period which made business losses. Thus, we do believe that implementing  effectiveness process safety management is a proactive business tools to sustain community trust and business growth in the future. 

The Future of the Safety Case

Miranda Taylor, Director – Environment, Safety & Productivity, APPEA

A New Process Safety Leadership Initiative for the Australian Upstream Oil and Gas Industry (onshore and offshore)
Why?

• Whilst LTFIR/TRIFRs have been trending down for the last decade, this is not the case for fatalities and high potential events which are still occurring and too frequently.
• We do not want to learn from a catastrophe what good practice is.  As an industry, we need to be rapidly and effectively sharing lessons, incidents, experiences and good practices.
• Process Safety discussions need to happen across the industry in the same way as personal safety, and process safety needs to be made very personal.
• Everyone in the industry has responsibility for process safety and failure to manage process safety can result in a terrible human cost.
• Process safety failures can have catastrophic effects in terms of loss of life, major damage to plants and facilities, environmental impact and loss of reputation and government(s) and public confidence in the industry.
• We need to build everyone’s respect for process safety. Everyone should understand the role of multiple and critical barriers and why the failure of those barriers and release of hydrocarbons is such an issue for our industry. We need to show the impact of stored energy when it is released - most people do not understand the power of hydrocarbons, steam or liquids under pressure when they are released or what it can look like when they meet an ignition source.
• For many years process safety has been the domain of risk engineers and subject matter experts with an enormous amount of technical jargon and complexity.  This, combined with the demands of safety case regulators has led to an unacceptable level of opaqueness and lack of clarity.
• Despite extensive technical material on good practice produced by the global and local industry, many people in the industry do not really understand what process safety is all about.
• Whilst processes and technologies are often complex and require (demand) technical competence to be in place, it is imperative that process safety is made simple. 

Why Now?

• The timing is right for this new leadership program.
• 7 gas trains to 21 (with 3 times the numbers of pipes, valves, gaskets to manage) in the next 2 to 5 years
• Simultaneous Operation of construction, commissioning and production at some sites
• The realisation of new technologies and processes (FLNG, CSG) –(see the “bath tub effect of failures in new plant)
• The challenges of older plant with life extension (see the “bath tub effect of failures in old plant)
• Decommissioning redundant facilities

Overview of Oil and Gas Industry New Process Safety Leadership Initiative