Analysis and assessment of risks of hazardous industrial facilities (HIF)

Understanding and identifying possible risks is an important stage in risk analysis, since an overlooked hazard will never be analyzed and will never be brought under control.

Risk Analysis and Assessment of Hazardous Industrial Facilities

Most technical equipment, buildings and structures at Russian fuel and energy complex facilities have already exceeded their design service life, are worn out and have practically exhausted their resource by 60-80%. The increasing frequency of accidents and man-made disasters confirms this. Gas stations, fuel storage facilities, oil depots, offshore platforms, oil refinery units and other hazardous industrial facilities, as a rule, have complex violations and non-compliance with industrial safety requirements, both during design and operation. At oil and gas production facilities, due to the high aggressiveness of the extracted product, risk analysis and assessment work is even more relevant.

An important aspect of ensuring safety during construction and operation of oil and gas production facilities is accounting for and processing all possible risks and their associated consequences within the framework of project implementation. This work is aimed at identifying, analyzing and controlling risks of large-scale accidents.

According to GOST R ISO 17776-2012 (Petroleum and gas industries. Offshore production installations. Methods and techniques for hazard identification and risk assessment. Guidelines), I will provide several definitions:

risk - is a combination of the possibility or probability of an event and the occurrence of risk consequences;

risk analysis - represents a systematic process of information processing for hazard identification and risk assessment;

risk assessment - represents a process of risk analysis and measurement.

Unaccounted risks lead to such consequences as:

• Multiple casualties or fatalities,
• Significant financial losses,
• Environmental disasters or other negative socio-cultural effects,
• Negative impact on company reputation at international and national levels.

The main task of risk identification and assessment is to use risk as a basis for prioritizing actions and managing inspection programs, where equipment to be inspected is evaluated depending on the degree of risk. In almost every situation, once risk is identified, there are alternative possibilities for its reduction. On the other hand, almost all major commercial losses result from the inability to understand or manage risk.

Main Types of Risk Assessment Work and Solutions for HSEQ

HSEQ - health protection, occupational safety, security and environmental protection.

• Hazard identification and risk assessment procedures (HAZID, HAZOP).
• Consequence analysis and impact modeling.
• Calculation and modeling of hydrodynamic processes (CFD).
• Toxic gas hazard analysis, including hydrogen sulfide presence assessments.
• Cryogenic process risk analysis.
• Qualitative and quantitative risk assessment (HRA).
• Equipment availability, reliability and maintainability studies.
• Assessment based on "as low as reasonably practicable" principle (ALARP).
• Development and application of work execution standards.
• Safety integrity level assessment (SIL) and layer of protection analysis (LOPA).
• Construction phase risk assessment.
• Escape, evacuation and rescue analysis (EERA)
• Emergency response plan preliminary planning.
• Emergency shutdown systems reliability analysis (ESSA).
• Dropped objects studies.
• Flare emission studies.
• Noise analysis.
• Bow-tie diagram analysis.
• Incident investigations.
• Development and implementation of complete HSEQ scenario (comprehensive safety assessment of hazardous industrial facility).
• HSEQ management system development.
• Environmental management.
• Human factors design and operation, engineering psychology.
• Cultural and behavioral improvements.
• Business risk assessment.
• Project risk management.
• Enterprise knowledge management.
• Safety management.
• General HSEQ support: policy, planning, procedures, safe system operation, audits and accident investigation.

Risk Assessment within Various Process Implementation.

Risk assessment within various process implementation, for example, transportation support for offshore fields, makes sense to develop comprehensive safety assessment for individual operating structures. The methodology of this analysis is identical to the development and implementation of a complete HSEQ scenario at an enterprise.

Development of a comprehensive safety assessment report requires a structured, formal risk management process covering the following main stages:

• Identification of potential hazards and consequences;
• Assessment of potential consequences/results and probability of their occurrence;
• Identification of control elements available to prevent or minimize the probability of hazard and consequence occurrence;
• Identification of recovery measures to mitigate consequences; and

Search for further possible risk reduction measures.

In its simplest form, this process includes:

• Hazard identification through hazard investigation/identification (HAZID);
• Assessment of hazard-related risk using a risk matrix by comparing it with acceptable risk criteria;
• Identification of control methods (barriers) available to prevent risk occurrence or minimize their consequences;
• Further analysis and risk assessment at a level proportional to risk;
• Identification and analysis of possible additional risk reduction measures.

Major/principal risks are those associated with major accidents that may lead to:

• Multiple fatalities;
• Significant asset losses;
• Massive environmental or socio-cultural effects;
• International negative impact on company reputation.

Major/principal risks require thorough bow-tie diagram risk analysis to identify barriers, control and recovery measures. Additionally, quantitative risk assessment is also conducted.

For example, for an offshore platform, the scope of work may include the following activities:

• Marine operations assessment.
• Onshore logistics process assessment - transportation of materials and personnel.
• Onshore warehouse operations assessment.
• Port operations assessment (if applicable).
• Helicopter operations assessment.
• Aircraft cargo delivery operations assessment.
• Waste generation operations assessment.

The result of the work is the conclusion that for safe facility operation there are sufficient HSEQ control methods (health protection, occupational safety, security and environmental protection) and, consequently, the hazardous industrial facility meets the requirements necessary for continuing its safe operation.