Safety Barriers Integrity Management System

• Main Authors: F.P. Costa Neto, J.L. Ribeiro, K.L. Ugulino, S.M. Mingrone
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. 2014-04-01
• Series: Chemical Engineering Transactions
• Online Access: https://www.cetjournal.it/index.php/cet/article/view/5926

Since the beginning of 2010 Petrobras has been searching for a tool that could help it to manage the risk of all E&P (Exploration & Production) production installations. At the end of 2010 it has been decided to use the Bow-tie diagram tool to identify all the qualitative risk and manage it. At the beginning of 2012 Petrobras were challenged to elaborate the Bow-tie Diagrams for all offshore installation that totalize 125 production platforms. In order to be successful on this challenge it was decided to standardize the Bow-tie modelling for all events and hazards from all Risk Analysis of those platforms. As a result it was developed a proprietary Bow-tie diagram tool. The safe barriers of this tool are based on the conception of LOPA (Layers Of Protection Analysis) tool, which are comprise of nine layers of protection. For Petrobras, the first five layers are set to prevent the event and the last four are set to mitigate the consequences. Besides the Bow-tie diagram, it was developed a systematic system to monitor the integrity of those layers. This approach is based on a computerized system that collects real time data from operational systems to give an idea of the safety functions of the platform. The integrity is monitored based on a series of questions of management elements of the unit analysed, about the instrument or equipment related to each layer. The system has been developed as a pilot for one single platform. The results of this pilot have been analysed in order to tune the operational limits to achieve the best performance in safety and operational. The idea is to answer those questions automatically to give an updated information to the OIM (Offshore Installation Manager) as soon as the status changes. This will help him to make the best decision in order to maintain a high safety level of the platform. In the future, Petrobras intends to extend this approach to all onshore E&P (Exploration & Production) installation.