Safety Case For High Hazard Potential Installations - The Way Forward Available to Purchase

During the past few decades, due to a number of accidents onshore and offshore, the public awareness of the consequences posed by major hazard installations to the employees and others around in terms of injuries or fatalities and on the environment in terms of pollution etc. has heightened. Following the experiences of explosion at Flixborough (United Kingdom 1974) and release of highly toxic dioxin at Seveso (Italy 1976) and other less publicized incidents of similar nature, a central scheme has been developed whereby such major hazards may be identified and assessed with a view to preventing major accidents and/or limiting their effects on people, property and the environment. As a result of the explosion and subsequent fire on the Piper Alpha in the North Sea, in which 167 lives were lost on 6th July 1988, a public enquiry was established which made 106 recommendations. These were accepted by the U.K government, and the Health and Safety Executive (H.S.E) Offshore Division was entrusted to develop Regulations which require Safety Cases to be prepared for all offshore installations and in respect of all activities carried out in the U.K territorial waters and its continental Shelf. The Regulations apply to existing fixed and mobile installations, well operations, and new fixed installations under design and will come into force on 31st May 1993. The paper deals briefly with CIMAH Regulations and in detail with the U.K Offshore Regulations, and describes the content of Safety Case as required under these Regulations for a typical platform. As most oil companies operate internationally it is shown that it would be to their advantage to prepare at least a Limited Safety Case for their on/offshore installations. It is hoped that governments of countries where such installations are situated would in due course prepare and apply similar enforcements.