Risky Business

Whether it be the threat of well failure, pipeline explosions, fires or toxic gas leaks, HSSE managers in the oil and gas sector certainly have their work cut out.

Strong disaster management planning is integral to securing the health and well-being of the region’s workforce and also offers companies the chance to safeguard their bottom line.

The financial cost associated with high profile disasters such as the Deep Water Horizon event can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and companies are now starting to invest in HSSE in order to mitigate these costs.

In order to be a successful HSSE manager in the Middle East’s oil and gas sector, you need to prepare for every situation, according to Whaddah Ghanem, HSE manager at ENOC.

“Before you can decide on disaster management planning in your business continuity, you really have to have a good understanding of what risks your organisation faces. You have to have a very strong and robust risk management process where you do the right level of risk assessment for your operations,” he says.

“In oil and gas we do a lot of risk assessment and we identify our risks, we see where we need to have mitigation measures and we put in place the required mitigation measures. The risk assessment will identify where you need to deal with your risks.

During these risk assessments we also identify the residual risk after we have implemented all the mitigation measures – you can’t have a 100% risk free operation unless you just shut down the whole plant. So then you look at the residual risk and you create emergency response and recovery plans which can deal with that residual risk,” he says.

Identifying the appropriate level of residual risk is a key challenge for HSSE managers in the oil and gas industry. After conducting a proper risk assessment operators will decide to put mitigation measures in place. Once those mitigation measure have been put in place, HSSE managers perform a calculation, and attempt to quantify the level of risk that remains.

“This is a semi-quantative process. You do the calculation and you get a number that relates to the level of risk. That number might be high enough to warrant further mitigation measures being put in place. Or otherwise it might show you that it is going to be too expensive to invest in so much protection.

For example, many years ago we stopped using the solvent benzene because it is a carcinogenic substance. Instead of going in and trying to develop processes and engineering where you isolate the worker from the solvent – no matter what we did, the residual risk was still too high. What we decided to do as an industry, was to stop using benzene altogether and replaced it with another non-carcinogenic substance,” says Ghanem.

According to Ghanem, good disaster management planning has four distinct elements.

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“First of all you need to look at your overall policy. How do we do disaster management? How do we do emergency response planning? Are we more focussed on controlling the incident and then leaving it to the authorities to control the rest of it, or are we involved in processing the whole incident from beginning to end,” says Ghanem.

The second element of good disaster management planning involves accurate and realistic scenario definition. HSSE managers need to envisage and identify their worst case scenario before it happens.

They also need to rate the probability of that worst case scenario materialising, prioritising those scenarios which have a higher possibility of occurring and allocating their budget accordingly.

“The third step is to identify the resources you will need to deal with that credible worst case scenario. For example, if you have a tank that is at risk of catching fire, you need to identify the size of the tank, you need to analyse how much foam and water you would need to extinguish that fire and you stock your resources sufficiently to be able to deal with that worst case scenario,” he says.

Having the appropriate resources on site in an easily accessible space can, in many HSSE cases, be the difference between life and death. Extinguishing a small fire before it spreads to more hazardous areas could prevent explosion and dramatically reduce the damage. Having easy access to breathing apparatus in the event of a toxic gas leak could save countless lives.

The final step on the path to proper disaster management planning is recovery planning.

“Imagine that you have a fire that destroys your entire operation. Once you’ve put out the fire and controlled the incident, what is your policy and readiness to put everything back into operation in order to minimise the amount of destruction to the business?” he says.

This may involve relocating staff to a backup location where operations can continue on an interim basis, until the damage has been repaired at the original site.

Previously, the Middle East’s oil and gas sector has been accused of merely paying lip service to HSSE and disaster management planning. However, in recent years the region has placed a growing emphasis on preventative HSSE measures, as Maisaa Nasrallah, chairperson at IOSH, states.

“All GCC countries have established HSE standards particularly to manage the oil and gas sector which combine local legal frameworks with international best practice from foreign investors and partners. While the UAE has taken the forefront in recent years on the development and implementation of HSE standards across a variety of industries, countries such as Qatar have also worked hard on improving key aspects of their legal frameworks such as worker welfare.

Regulators look for international best practices implemented across the globe in order to adapt them to the region and primarily base them on legislation from the UK, US and Australia,” she says.

Nasrallah also believes that the Middle East’s changing attitude towards HSSE issues will help it emerge as a region of HSSE excellence.

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“Misconceptions exist worldwide regarding the value of accurate HSE reporting where the primary cause is lack of understanding and appreciation of the key role it plays in identifying risk areas and improving performance. HSE standards can only advance when we understand what gaps currently exist and devise mechanisms to improve them.

To address this, awareness strategies and campaigns shall move away from the strong focus on reporting ‘zero accidents’ and move towards removing unsafe acts and conditions from the workplace and promoting HSE reporting through incentive schemes,” she says.

In order for this to happen, oil and gas firms will need to continue investing in HSSE through the recent slump in oil prices, as Ghanem is quick to point out.

“The main problem is conflicting priorities sometimes. Also economic factors. A lot of people try to cut costs of their contracts so that they can win tenders by cutting down on any HSE costs. Sometimes if you don’t do an effective HSE valuation you might be taking on a contractor who is cheaper but is operating in a much less safe way,” he says.

High profile HSSE disasters such as the Deep Water Horizon event and the Bopal Petrochemical incident are stark reminders of the need for a robust and well-funded HSSE culture within the oil and gas industry. The damage caused to company’s reputations, coupled with the financial cost of cleaning up a high profile incident, means that oil and gas firms in the Middle East are now investing heavily in HSSE as a preventative measure.

Proper disaster management planning forms the backbone of any HSSE strategy in the oil and gas sector. In today’s climate of heightened environmental legislation and increased public scrutiny of HSSE practices, it behoves upon the region’s HSSE managers to ensure that they have planned for that worst case scenario.