Background
Oil and gas industry depends heavily on the exploration of the natural resources and it can be enhanced with the use of installations of the machinery and plants. Studies have shown that use of these installations has resulted in the high economic recovery of the resources. The UK gas and oil industry operating at the offshore in North Sea also take the assistance from the installations as well. In order to maintain integrity throughout the life of the resources, the use of ageing and life extension of the installations, plant, and equipment is highly preferred. The ageing and life extension (ALE) assists the operators in the industry to make a high economic recovery without neglecting the health and safety of the workers working on the project. However, in many previous instances such as financial crises and price drops, the operators mainly focused on the production or the operation rather than the safety of the installations, plants and the equipment engaged in the projects in the offshore of North Sea. Consequently, there had been a lot of reports of health deterioration and risks of a worker working in these projects. The aim of this paper is to critically discuss the issues of these ALE’s from the perspective of health and safety practitioner.
This paper uses a content analysis method to analyse the risks and the health and risk issues related to the ALE after the operators started concentrating mainly on the products rather than the safety and risk. The necessary data and information for the analysis have been collected from journals and articles related to the topic of the paper.
The studies have found that, although the life extensions of the installations and equipment are important, they often compel the management to ignore the health and safety issues of workers and the project as a whole. These have resulted in life threat to the workers of the project and the economic loss to the operators. The main reason for the mismanagement of the project is the violations of legal and the ethical requirements from the side of the management.
The installations help the operator to enhance their operation so that more and more economic recovery can be done from the resources in the offshore of North Sea. Silvestre and Gimenes (2017) stated that resource reserve extraction takes a lot of time and hence the installations and the plants used in the project are often required to be used beyond their design philosophy. This also helps in the integrity and the collaboration among the team working in the project as well. From the perspective of the business of the operators as well, the use of plants and machinery for an extended period of time saves a huge amount of cost of the operators. Yang and Haugen (2016) stated that the machinery, equipment and the plants can be used beyond their planned lifetime meeting the health and ethical requirement as well. However, post-2014 period the operators only concentrated on the output of the project ignoring the safety and health of the workers. This violated the health and safety at work act 1974 of UK regulations and as a result, there were around 71 reported incidents which affected the lives of the workers at these projects. Falck et al. (2015) commented that basic ethics which is required to be maintained in order to use the installations and the equipment beyond their philosophical design was also ignored by the operators. The lack of adherence to the legal and the ethical requirements of the life extensions of the machinery also impacted the integrity which is the basic motive for the activity. Briggle (2015) found out that, the increased life threat and risk associated with the works in the offshore projects sites, the productivity and the motivation of the workers dropped between the year 2014 and 2016 leading to an insignificant increase in the output despite utmost concentration on the output maximisation post the oil price drop.
Assignment Task
Risk management and the asset integrity are two of the steps that are supposed to be taken by the operators when extending the use of the machinery without having security and health issues for the workers of the projects. The risk assessment is done based on different dimensions such as the procedure, people, practices, systems and many more. The methodology to assess the risk, also called the health check is the comparison of the current status of the system with the benchmark status which is set by the expert health and safety practitioner of the organisations. In the case of North Sea offshore projects, there were no available health and safety practitioner in the organisations. Landucci and Paltrinieri (2016) commented that the benchmark needs to be changed as per the changes in the external situations such as the resource availability, status of the environment and many more. Consequently, the failed gap analysis for the risk assessment ignored the health and the safety of the workers of the project.
Another step that comes under the methodology of the extension of the life of the equipment and the machinery being used in the North Sea is the asset integrity analysis. This step is also carried out by the health and safety practitioners of the organisations. This step studies the capabilities of the existing machinery and the equipment to deal with the deterioration. The health and safety practitioner, based on the financial capabilities of the organisation decides the time for which the use of the machinery can be extended. However, the operators in the North Sea ignored the importance of the assessment of life extensions for the plants and the machinery causing life threat to the workers of the project. Therefore, the risk such as erosion, leak, and radiation are common in case of gas and oil industry ignorance of which also results in the economic loss as well.
The North Sea has been a popular reserve for hydrocarbon for a long time now and the use of technologies to increase the economic recovery has been experimented from time to time. Some of the technological advancement has also been made in the field of ageing and life extensions of the equipment and the machinery used in the project. According to Shi et al. (2015), most of the investments from the side of the operators have been in the field of ALE of the project. Over the time the operators have understood the importance of ALE in the economic recovery and the performances of the organisations without impacting the health of the workers and the officials associated with the projects. In addition to that, knowledge development is also undertaken from the side of the health and safety practitioner of the organisation as well. Kenzhetayeva and Fleming (2017) highlighted that the role of the health and safety practitioner has changed with the advancement of the digital technology. Earlier the health and the safety used to undertake the gap analysis manually where the chance of human error would be very costly for the organisations. The technological advancement and the availability of modern software have enabled the health and safety practitioners to keep track of the statuses of the systems being used in the project. Besides, the benchmark-setting related to the changes in the external status of the reserves and the changing organisational objective also gets easy with the advancement in the technology. However, required knowledge development of the health and safety practitioner is not entertained by the management of the organisations. In addition to that, during the output maximisation phase, the organisations devoted fewer resources for the operation and the maintenance of the software for the gap analysis and integrity assessment. This led to the increased risk for the workers in the North Sea hydrocarbon sites.
Methods
Changes in the organisational skills and knowledge are inevitable as the changes in the technology are rapid. The health and safety practitioners of the organisations are at the positions to evaluate the changes and reflect upon the changes that need to make by the organisations to ensure the health and the safety of the organisations (Mendhe et al. 2015). However, implementation of the new knowledge in terms of ALE in oil and gas industry becomes time-consuming and costly. Thus, organisations often tend to ignore the requirements using the old practices which in turn harm the lives and the health of the workers of the projects.
The statistics related to ALE in case of gas and oil industry of UK also shows that workers of the project are at the receiving end. There has been a report of 173 loss of containment in the industry between the year 1996 and 2008. Bucelli et al. (2017) stated that this is mostly because of the lack of emphasis provided by the management of the organisations on the health and the safety of the workers in the sites. This loss of containment accounts for the 5.5% of all the all loss of containment events in the industry. Boudet et al. (2018) pointed out that, there has been a limited data available regarding the problem and hence the real problem could be fatal for the workers in the offshore sites in the North Sea. Apart from that, MARS database also showed a huge loss of containment due to ageing and life extension. As per the reports, there has been a loss of 11 lives with 183 workers being injured along with the economic loss of 170 million Euros. Therefore, many studies have concluded that extended use of the machinery and the equipment in the oil and gas industry of UK are being done without the adherence to the ethical and legal requirements. Apart from that, excessive desire to increase output in order to deal with the decrease in the price also diverted the emphasis of the management of the operators from the health and safety requirement of the workers working in the projects in the offshore of North Sea.
As discussed above, the life extension of the machinery, plants and the equipment are legal only if some of the rules and the regulations are met by the operators. The health and safety at work act 1974 is the basic legislation that governs the wellbeing of the workers in any organisations in the UK. As per the legislation the management have the liability to make sure that working conditions are safe to an extent that will not harm any of the workers of the organisation. The injured workers at the North Sea offshore sites have shown that violating the laws the management of the organisations has neglected the interests of the workers. Apart from that, Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 were also implemented in the country in order to make sure the projects do not harm the lives of the workers. Operators, through the use of ALE without adherence to the ethics and the legal requirement under this legislation, violated the norms which resulted in the loss of containment and death of workers. Bjerga and Aven (2016) in this context have cited that, the governing body of the country and the legislation are not strong enough to bring some serious consequences to the operators of the industry and hence they are finding it easier to violate the norms putting the lives of the workers in danger. Apart from these, there are other legislation related to the ALE in the North Sea as well, which are as follows-
- Management of health and safety at work regulations 1990
- Provision and use of work equipment regulation 1998
- Pipeline safety regulations 1996
- Offshore installations and pipeline works (management and administration) regulations 1995
- Offshore installations and wells (design and construction) regulations 1996
- Offshore installations (prevention of fire, explosion, and emergency response) regulation 1996.
Findings
However, it is interesting to note that, many of the studies have found that, a number of legislation related to the ALE in oil and gas industry of UK has been violated by the operators in the past. The oil price drop compelled the operators to ignore all the requirements so that it can only concentrate on output maximisation not knowing how the lack of adherence reduced the economic value processes instead.
Based on the study of the paper, it is recommended to the government to set up a strong governing body especially for the interest of the workers. The workers’ health is at risk at every stage of the process especially during the price output maximisation phase of the operators of the industry. In addition to that, it is also recommended for the management of the operating organisations to incorporate safety needs of the workers while initiating extension process of the machinery in the offshore projects at the North Sea. Internal auditing system of the operators can be given more responsibilities to ensure that ethical and legal requirements are properly met.
Conclusion
Thus, the study shows that workers safety is at stake in the oil and the gas industry of the UK. This risk and the lack of security are further enhanced due to the improper extension of the machinery and the equipment devoted to the respective projects. The study also has recognised the requirement of using the ageing components of the projects beyond their planned term as it helps in the process of operating integrity and reduction of costs. However, previous mishaps have shown the case of ignorance from the side of the operators and management. It has, in the past, violated lots of legislation and ethical requirements for ALE in the oil and gas industry of UK.
References
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