Barrier Integrity Management: An Innovative Approach for ManagingProcess Safety Risks in Oil and Gas Assets

摘要

An effective process safety management in O&G assets is ensured through multiple and independent barriersaimed at preventing the occurrence of major accidents and/or limiting the severity of consequences thatsuch events may cause on people,environment,asset and Company reputation.The evaluation of the barrierintegrity and the identification of performance requirements of barriers elements has been part of the riskmethodology developed to assess the risk of major accidents in accordance with the EU Directive onoffshore safety.The barriers,identified by the bow-tie methodology,are evaluated considering the effectivelevel of their implementation and the global effectiveness of each barrier with a dedicated performance card,linking the evaluation criteria with specific performance factors,derived from SPAR-H methodology,basedon the Functionality(F),Availability(A),Reliability(R),Survivability(S)and Interdependency(I)criteria.In the evaluation of hardware/physical barriers,system reliability and availability are also included in theanalysis in order to consider the highest level of integrity associated to hardware contributions.