The DEA’s supervision pivots on practical safety aspects

15 June 2009
By Steen Hartvig Jacobsen, journalist

The Offshore Safety Act that replaced the Offshore Installations Act in 2006 has changed the basis for the DEA’s supervision of safety conditions on offshore workplaces in the North Sea. The previous Act focused on specific requirements and threshold limit values. The main objective of the new Act is to maintain as high a safety level as reasonably practicable, and operators are specifically charged with minimizing the risk for employees, installations and the environment.

This has made the ALARP principle the pivotal point of operators’ safety management systems and the DEA’s supervision. ALARP is an abbreviation denoting that risks must be reduced to a level  ”As Low As Reasonably Practicable”. Basing safety initiatives on ALARP engenders a more dynamic process because operators must continuously assess the risk level and reduce risks whenever reasonably practicable. The assessment of what is reasonably practicable is based on physical and organizational conditions as well as the financial resources required.

- Without doubt we are heading in the right direction with the ALARP principle, which involves continuously improving safety in step with technological advances. However, it places new demands on public authorities and operators, says Henrik Andersen, Director.

The DEA introduced a new supervision strategy in 2008 to adapt its supervision to the ALARP process. As a result, the DEA regularly inspects all mobile units and manned fixed offshore installations, at least once a year. Unmanned installations are inspected as required, in most cases when a drilling rig is stationed at the installation.

Supervising operators’ management systems has been accorded relatively higher priority, and supervision of special issues, which involves more in-depth investigation of specific areas, supplements the regular spot checks. In 2008, the DEA focused its supervision of special issues on noise and process safety, among other issues. The regular annual inspections have focused on work-related accidents, hydrocarbon releases and the maintenance of safety-critical equipment, areas that are continuously monitored.

The new supervision strategy meant that the DEA carried out 24 inspections of offshore installations and eight inspections of the operators’ onshore bases, including a review of their management systems. Five of the offshore inspections in 2008 were unannounced inspections of the Halfdan B, Gorm, Siri and South Arne platforms and the ENSCO 70 drilling rig.

In response to three accidents in 2008, the DEA had to make immediate inspections: Following a fire in a turbine on Tyra East, a work-related accident involving a fall on Halfdan A, and another accident that occurred because safety rules on the Energy Exerter drilling rig failed to be observed while the rig was operating at the Valdemar AB platform. The overall accident frequency for 2008 was calculated at 3.5 reported accidents per million working hours (3.6 in 2007). The accident frequency on mobile units dropped from 4.2 to 1.4, while it increased from 3.2 to 4.2 on fixed installations. The accident frequency for offshore workplaces continues to be much lower than for onshore workplaces.