(180a) Facing the END: Challenges in Maintaining Process Safety Discipline for Offshore Units UNDER Decommissioning. a Case Applied in the Campos Basin.

The life of offshore production units, like other industrial plants, includes the macro stages of conception, design, construction, operation and decommissioning. Taking the process safety, this must reflect on the concepts and guidelines that comprise it, which permeate all stages of the lifecycle, and this, therefore, includes the stages related to the end of the installations.

A idea that must people in the industry have of an industrial plant undergoing decommissioning is that the process is stopped, all systems are immediately shut down and hibernated, and actions to clean, dismantle and remove the systems begin. However, in the case of offshore installations, there are natural obstacles to this process, such as limited people on board, environmentally sensitive areas in the surrounding area and the physical distance to the location. These are some factors that make the decommissioning process even more complex, since several systems remain operational to maintain the habitability of the installation, energy integration, gas flow and drainage, for example.

The Brazilian scenario about decommissioning processes focused on sale or closure of activities, which began with onshore fields and small offshore units, are increasingly complex and therefore time-consuming.

This work aims to address the challenges in routine of process safety assessments, maintaining operational safety requirements, in offshore units in the Campos Basin, where the desired levels of safety that were conceived during the project need to be maintained in units whose operational reality changes every day, as well as the integrity situation of the facilities and operational safety barriers, which naturally degrade over time and exposure to the maritime environment, at a time when maintenance resources and investments in new fields compete with those of the decommissioning process. This is in a scenario where the main organizations of the oil industry are defining the safety premises to be met, creating an environment of continuous and mutual learning. To the offshore worker, who continues at the operational front, the process safety culture enhanced can be the key to the success of this endeavor.