Managing Health, Safety and Environment in a Complex Simultaneous Operations (SIMOPS) within the Context of an Integrated Projects: A Case Study

摘要

The Total Exploration and Production Nigeria Limited has been operating its first discovered field in Nigeria for more than 40 years as an oil dominated field but the future potential of the field is gas. Hence, the decision to upgrade the field to harness the gas potential as well as achieving the national priorities of flare down and gas supply to the domestic market. After several studies and evaluation of various options, it was decided to carry out the upgrade in Simultaneous Operations (SIMOPS) mode. The upgrade involved triple SIMOPS of oil and gas production, drilling in a gas well cluster and heavy construction (Upgrade Projects). This SIMOPS is uncharacteristically complex with the following elements; more than 3 years non-stop activities, more than 6 million man-hours, more than 4,000 people working together out of which more than 80% are semiskilled and unskilled local community personnel; involvement of consortium of 3 contractors who have never worked together in the past, more than 15 major subcontractors, unknown underground conditions of the installations, aging facility with assets integrity challenges, over 2000 lifting of loads above high pressure live-lines, large number of thermal engines (mobile and stationary) and other ignition sources in hazardous zones and so on. The Company (Project management team and Production team) together with the contractors jointly put together some well thought out Safety initiatives to contain the identified risks. Some of these initiative include; effective risk assessment mechanism, strict control of ignition sources and looping the ignition engine Emergency Shut-Down (ESD) to the plant ESD, drop object study and crash test of protective barrier built across high pressure live-lines, sectionalization of SIMOPS zones, joint project and production emergency drills, technical and HSE competence development to mention but a few. More than 24 million contractors’ man-hours achieved and about 6 million man-hours remaining with a lot of challenges that the project has encountered. This paper will present in detail what the company implemented to achieve HSE results such as Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) of 0.37 and Lost Time Injury Frequency (LTIF) of 0.10.