Hydrocarbon Processing - January 2021 - 19

Safety

C. BREWER
Sphera, Denver, Colorado

Do companies have the right tools to make
proactive safety decisions?
A process safety management/operational risk management survey conducted
by Sphera in 2020 polled respondents on
the following items:
* Safety culture
* The reality of risk across
hazardous industries
* The methods organizations
use for identifying, understanding
and communicating risk
* Priorities and company plans
for digital transformation.
The industry breakdown included
oil and gas (36%), chemicals and petrochemicals (19%) and manufacturing
(17%), as well as other industries like oilfield services, utilities, metals and mining.
Participation was offered globally, and
feedback was received across all regions.
Some of the key statistics include 88%
of participants indicating that safety is part
of corporate value structures, supported
by upper management; 78% of respondents continuously monitoring safety performance; and 60% of participants striving
to reduce operational and major accident
hazard risk exposure. The survey suggested additional drivers for improving safety
performance, including continuous process improvement, operational excellence,
regulatory compliance, and satisfying corporate and board priorities, among others.
Risk awareness can pay for itself.
Despite good intentions, 49% of survey
respondents said most organizations are
unaware of their major accident hazard
risk vulnerability, and only 37% are confidently and proactively managing process
safety risk exposure. For the last 5 yr, the
percentage of companies that proactively
manage safety have been surveyed; year
on year, the result is somewhere in the
36%-40% range.
This statistic gives reason for pause.
Earlier this year, Marsh published its 100
largest hydrocarbon loss report. It is strik-

FIG. 1. Aging infrastructure and high utilization in the downstream sector are largely to blame
for the $4.5 B of hydrocarbon losses reported over the past 2 yr.

ing that over the past 2 yr, the industry
faced its largest losses on record-$4.5 B,
which is 10% of the combined 50-yr total.
Aging infrastructure and high utilization
in the downstream sector were largely to
blame (FIG. 1). Over those 2 yr, the oil and
gas industry was recovering from its previous oil price downturn, which may very
well repeat itself again 2 yr from now. It begets the question: Do companies actually
have the right tools to proactively manage
infrequent, high-consequence events?
Sphera asked companies how they
identify risks. Audits and inspections, hazard and operability studies (HAZOPs),
" what-if " studies and process hazards
analyses (PHAs) are the most common
means. Around 46% of participants suggested that they have deployed technology systems to support their risk assessments. However, they also highlighted
concerns about the frequency and effectiveness of those studies. Half of the companies said they review risk every 1 yr-6
yr, with only 8% reporting that they review risk daily or weekly. Approximately
53% indicated that they are assessing only
a portion of their facilities, while half are

concerned with the consistency and quality of their assessment and audit practices.
On average, companies reported that they
are able to complete only 68% of their average safety-critical maintenance and asset integrity inspections every year. Data
is siloed, systems are static and information is dated and incomplete.
Also, only 51% of respondents said
they thought it was practical to set 100%
of their planned maintenance and inspections to active, because limited resources
(72%), conflicting priorities (71%) and
limited budget (49%) were getting in
the way-the same three challenges seen
in every survey for the last 5 yr running.
Also, average scheduled maintenance and
inspections achieved has hovered at the
70% level for the last 3 yr. These results
reinforce the thinking that perhaps the
right tools are not available to make proactive safety decisions.
Lacking and lagging insights are perhaps the reason the majority of industry
leaders told us there are gaps between wellengineered process safety approaches and
the reality on assets. They also agreed that
risk changes between periodic process
Hydrocarbon Processing | JANUARY 2021 19

Hydrocarbon Processing - January 2021

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