2025 Spring Meeting and 21st Global Congress on Process Safety

(173a) Optimizing Operational Safety: Prioritizing Critical Barriers in Offshore Units

Authors

Flavia Carreiro, PETROBRAS
Andre Dantas, Petrobras
Francisco J.T. Andrade Filho, Lufthansa Consulting SA
The 2023 Annual Operational Safety Report by the Agência Nacional de Petróleo, Gás Natural e Biocombustíveis (ANP) underscores the critical role of barrier management in oil and gas exploration and production safety. Integrity management failures, particularly in critical safety elements, accounted for 26% of critical non-conformities. Additionally, 17% were due to inadequate adoption of safety philosophies. These statistics emphasize the need for enhanced safety barrier management to mitigate risks, prevent accidents, and protect people, the environment, and assets. Dynamic barrier management systems offer a systematic approach to monitor the integrity and reliability of process safety barriers and mitigators. By dynamically visualizing residual risks through bow-tie diagrams, these systems enable granular analysis of scenarios, identifying specific issues, and facilitating proactive risk management. This proactive approach ensures that top events remain under control, safety barriers are maintained, and risks are minimized to ALARP levels. To accurately assess barrier degradation, both quantitative and qualitative factors must be considered. Decision support models, such as the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), can prioritize barriers based on relevant safety indicators. By focusing on mechanical integrity indicators, like those developed by the CCPS model, and categorizing barriers (e.g., safety interlocking devices and relief systems), AHP can help identify the most critical barriers for a specific offshore unit's process safety management system. The primary objective of this study is to assess the perception of offshore unit risk managers regarding the importance of these indicators and prioritize critical barriers for their respective process safety management systems.