Following Macondo Accident, the European Community established the Offshore Safety Directive No. 2013/30/EU, transposed into the Italian Decree 145/2015, aimed at preventing the risk of Major Accidents in the offshore installations. To comply with regulator requirements a Major Hazard Report (MHR) for each offshore installation has to be issued by Operators to demonstrate that risk level for people and the environment deriving from Major Accidents is tolerable. Developing a strategy to meet legislation requirements for several MHRs in a relatively short time has represented a challenge for O&G Companies. This paper illustrates the strategy adopted by our Company to meet this challenging target.
Eni approach started with the benchmarking of "goal setting" regimes already implemented in O&G producing countries, in particular UK and Norway.
It was then followed by the engagement of all stakeholders in the very early stage of the activities in order to finalize an agreed methodology for MHR. Early involvement of Trade Associations, Oil & Gas Associations (Assomineraria) and Approving Authorities represented in the peripheral and central Competent Committee (namely: Mining Authority - UNMIG –, Civil Defense, Harbour Authority and Ministry of Environment) and University Research Institutes has been fundamental to get final Authorities approval within due dates for existing installations (July 2018).
The methodology, based on a preliminary HAZard IDentification followed by a bow-tie analysis for risk quantification, is sufficiently rigorous and standardized to ensure a worldwide applicability.
MHR methodology was tuned with a ‘pilot’ program implemented in 2016 to few representative installations and then was applied to all Italian Eni offshore assets in 2017 and 2018.
A clusterization approach capable to rationalise the number of MHRs to be analysed, ensuring at the same time a proper risk management, was adopted taking advantage of the repeatability of risk analysis to several installations having similar risks identified. Clusterization approach consists in an effective grouping of installations afferent to a geographical area which has been considered homogenous on the basis of two main criteria:
same gas collecting facilities onshore;
comparable environmental sensitivity. For each group the "representative installations" have been identified via a risk-based approach and assessed according to MHR methodology.
Risk assessment for non representative installations in the same group has been presented in a single Cluster Report, which includes a demonstration that all risks have been properly managed.
