Abstract
The Frade Field is this company's first operated oil field development major capital project in Brazil. This paper provides an overview of how the company successfully transitioned from a Greenfield organization to a functioning offshore production operation while maintaining the company's commitment to world-class safety performance.
As the Frade Project entered the construction, installation, and commissioning phase in 2006, the company faced multiple challenges. The existing in-country organization had to grow exponentially to effectively manage the project. Contractors for all aspects of the project (including land and air transportation, shore base, supply/subsea equipment installation vessels, drilling rigs and supporting drilling services, and a new Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel) had to be selected and brought into alignment with the company's HES management system. Most significantly, the company's expectations for instituting an incident-free workforce culture had to be met. This was a focus area since many of the available contractors in Brazil were struggling with their safety performance and did not have robust HES management systems in place.
To meet the safety challenge, the company employed a suite of strategies, including:
Contracting consultants to assist in deployment of safety culture processes within the contractor organizations
Embedding HES professionals at the contractor worksites (e.g., shore base, drilling rigs, supply vessels, FPSO)
Bringing in expatriate company HES advisors to provide support and mentoring to the national HES personnel (company and contractor)
Partnering with contractors to develop HES mitigation plans and bridging documents, share roles such as training, and assist with closure of identified gaps
Providing strong leadership visibility and support through management field visits and contractor forums
Openly sharing successful practices
These strategies have been a main contributor to the strong safety performance of the Frade Project. Compared to Oil and Gas Producers Association data for offshore operations, the Project's current LTI and TRIR rates are commendable. In fact, the Project completed a period of two million consecutive man hours without a recordable injury – with a majority of contractor work being high risk activities such as offshore drilling and supply/installation vessels. Contractor feedback points to the proactive interaction between the Frade Project and contractor organizations from the early contracting phase as being the driving force behind the success of this major capital project.
