Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Offshore oil and gas operations combine confined petroleum process activities in remote and sometimes harsh marine environments. There are significant risks to the safety of the personnel involved in these operations, the natural environment in which they occur, and the physical installations themselves. Potential hazards include blowouts, riser and process leaks, fires, explosions, vessel collisions, helicopter accidents, dropped objects, structural failures, and capsizing. Examples of accidents can be found from every region of the world and for every type of platform. The probability of such events tends be low, but the consequences can be disastrous in terms of loss of human life and capital assets, and damage to the natural environment. Safety and environmental management based on risks associated with an offshore operation in the early design stage would enable a cost-optimal and inherently safer approach. The goal of this project is to develop a novel integrated safety and environmental management system for offshore installations during their entire life cycle. This system would provide the capability to optimally design, evaluate, and decide effective safety and environmental measures under one umbrella. This goal is achieved by developing: o novel methodologies and models for risk based safety and environmental assessment and management, o new robust methodology for life-cycle risk-based environment and safety related decision making, and o implementing these novel high level risk assessment, management and decision-making methodologies and models in a software suite for integrated safety and environmental management of offshore oil and gas operations. The potential benefits are: i) improvement in safety of offshore oil and gas industry operation in the region and elsewhere, ii) development of a center of expertise in the field of human and environmental safety and risk that will support the local, national and international offshore industries, and iii) generation of knowledge-based employment through commercialization of the training and products developed through this project.