The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) recently released its Process Safety Fundamentals report to support companies as they seek to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, severe and fatal process-safety events. This report presents a core set of 10 fundamentals. The IOGP said that these core items are relevant to all upstream operations.
Designed to support those working in front-line operations and maintenance and on wells teams, the report is informed by data and designed to draw attention to process-safety situations that are most likely to lead to fatalities.
Data reported by IOGP members between 2007 and 2017 shows that 128 people lost their lives in 56 process-safety events. Analysis of these fatal incidents was conducted by an IOGP team with the aim of determining what types of potential process-safety fundamentals were factors in the incidents and how, if they had been implemented effectively, they might have prevented the deaths.
The analysis considered a broad range of potential fundamentals influenced by both the information on the fatalities provided by IOGP members and members experience. Each fatal event was reviewed against the list of potential fundamentals and linked to one or more of them. Determining which of the fundamentals could be linked to the highest number of fatal incidents or fatalities allowed a shortlist to be identified, which eventually became the 10 IOGP Process Safety Fundamentals.
The IOGP says the fundamentals are intended to be complementary to its Life Saving Rules—complementary but separate. The organization does not recommend that they are combined into a single list. Whereas the Life Saving Rules are focused primarily on personal safety, the Process Safety Fundamentals are targeted specifically at process-safety hazards, although some overlap exists.