Introduction to automated health and safety risk identification and classification

Abstract

During the past decade, the major oil and gas players in Australia have put in significant effort to improve their performance on health and safety. With a strong focus on safety awareness of the workforce, the Australian oil and gas industry has been able to improve their health and safety performance, with leading indicators dropping significantly. From an international perspective, however, the total recordable injury rate in Australia is still more than two and a half times higher than the total recordable injury rate among member of the International Oil and Gas Producers Association.

This extended abstract introduces a new method to identifying and classifying risk and risk levels within oil and gas exploration and production operations based on the results from a trial project at an Australian LNG producer. This risk identification should be done in addition to the existing health and safety approaches. Nowadays, the workers in oil and gas operations use computer systems for managing their work, from isolations and permits to job hazard analyses. The equipment used in oil and gas exploration and production is producing large volumes of data. And external sources of information, such as the BoM, provide context on the conditions in which work is performed. Bringing these sources of data together and using automated statistical tools to identify and classify risk created a new perspective on the risk profile of activities of oil and gas operations. This enables organisations to pinpoint their risk-mitigation strategies where it will really make a difference.