The director general of Norway's Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) has said the industry's attitude to the impact of costing cutting measures on safety is "far too passive" and warned that she expects the industry to deal with its economic challenges without affecting safety.
During a meeting with the Norwegian industry earlier this week, director general Anne Myhrvold said: “On the contrary, cost cuts and efficiency enhancement processes must help to strengthen safe operation."
Lubrizol
"We understand why the industry is now taking action to save money and get costs under control, but we require that it ensures quality at all levels and phases of the business,” she said. “This is a question of setting the right priorities and tailoring the use of resource to the work which needs to be done.
Myhrvold says the industry is facing new and stronger challenges as it moves into unexplored regions in the far north of the Norwegian Continental Shelf. In more mature areas, the industry also faces "a great deal" of outstanding maintenance.
"The most recent figures from our RNNP (trends in risk level) report, presented in April, show that the backlog of preventive and corrective maintenance totals 100,000 and 2,500,000 hours respectively,” she said, then questioning how the industry will handle this backlog and what will happen to it if cuts continue.
“It’s important that the companies have a sufficiently good basis for their decisions, and that they fully understand the potential short- and long-term consequences of their actions,” she says.
The RNNP study on trends in risk level in the petroleum activity shows that developments are moving in a positive direction, but that the picture is nuanced.
Measures which have contributed to a high level of safety must be maintained by the industry, and an extra commitment is needed in a number of areas, says the PSA.
According to Myhrvold, these relate in particular to adopting new knowledge and ensuring continuous improvement in operating safely – as required by the regulations.
“The present level of safety in the industry is based on clear regulatory requirements and responsible players,” she observes. “And these regulations provide room for manoeuvre. They specify how safe the activity must be, but not how this is to be achieved. Each player is responsible for choosing their specific solutions.
“It’s nevertheless important to emphasize the demand for continuous improvement. This is a fundamental principle in the regulations – and an important part of the Norwegian model.”
Myhrvold says this means the industry cannot relax, but must constantly work to reduce risk and develop new and better solutions.
“It means the industry has to pursue two objectives when costs are to be reduced,” she says. “Their measures must not only yield a financial benefit, but also help to boost safety. But we don’t feel the industry is being sufficiently explicit that it’ll achieve safety gains with its current cost-saving processes. They say that these cuts won’t have any negative consequences for safety, but that attitude is far too passive.”
“We believe risk analyses and documentation are two areas where both safety and financial gains can be made,” says Finn Carlsen, director of professional competence at the PSA.
“These aspects must become more appropriate to the task. Action here would reveal that much of what’s produced today is unnecessary.”
Carlsen points out that such evaluations are important tools for maintaining a prudent level of safety and for contributing to continuous improvement.
“But the question is whether all of them are suitable in the sense that they actually help to support the decision taken. Is the right method used? How do they handle uncertainty? It might seem now and again that the companies are more concerned with carrying out a risk assessment than with its results."
Carlsen says the same applies to documentation. The volume of documents generated in developing and operating fields and facilities on the NCS has expanded dramatically since 2000.
“Why this increase? What purpose do all these documents serve? A lot of this doesn’t reflect demands in regulations or standards, but internal company requirements.
“Both risk analyses and documentation can and must become more suitable. That’ll achieve both increased safety and better use of resources.”
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