Abstract
The development of marginal fields in deepwater and hostile environmental conditions represents a technological challenge which to be winning, must conciliate competitive with safety and environmental protection. For this reason, since the beginning of Aquila Project, Safety Dept. was called to join the Project Task Force internally established, to sum up resources with experiences in the main technological areas. These specialists have not been permanently part of the Task Force but they were the reference individuals throughout the project life. From this point of view, Aquila oil field could be considered as a model: since from the early engineering phase, safety analysis, as HAZID and HAZOP and other studies have been done and the results were implemented into the detailed engineering. The risk assessment considered the overall development system as well as the certification; from downhole completion up to the offloading operation, equipment, operations and procedures have been considered.
This paper highlights the most significant studies and recommendations issued in the HAZOP works with the aim to increase the safety conditions during installation and production phase.
In particular the following were considered:
Dropped Object Study: to establish the probability of damage to the subsea equipment resulting from objects potentially dropped from surface;
Use of well fuel gas (sour) in the engine room: to minimise the potential presence of sour gas in the vicinity of the Living Quarter especially in case of leakage from pipes carrying gas to Boiler, or in case of any gas emergency;
Probabilistic analysis of incidental sequences concerning the leakage of production pipes in the turret area.
