Health and Safety Challenges of Ageing and Life Extension in UK Oil and Gas Industry

This paper analyses the challenges of ALE in the UK oil and gas industry from the perspective of health and safety practitioner. It discusses the business case for extending the life of ageing installations in North Sea, risk management and asset integrity of the North Sea installations, knowledge development and technological advancement, changes in organisational skill and knowledge, statistics related to ALE from cases of HSE and oil and gas industry of UK, and legislations related to ALE in the North Sea.

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HEALTH AND SAFETY REGARDING AGEING AND LIFE
EXTENSION (ALE) OF OIL AND GAS ASSETS IN THE
NORTH SEA

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Executive Summary
Oil and gas industry of the UK is one of the valuable industries of the country. It
contributes significantly to the GDP of the country and employs a huge number of workers as
well. It is a common practice in the industry to use the equipment and the installations
beyond their planned lifetime in order to maintain the integrity and the cost of operation.
However, there are some techniques which help the operators undertake extensions without
harming the lives of the workers. Nevertheless, price drops and the changes in the markets
have shown, the excessive importance given to output maximisation creating health and
safety challenges to the workers of the projects. This paper analyses the challenges of ALE in
the UK oil and gas industry from the perspective of health and safety practitioner.

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Table of contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Methods......................................................................................................................................4
Findings......................................................................................................................................4
Discussion..................................................................................................................................4
The business case for extending the life of ageing installations in North Sea.......................4
Risk management and asset integrity of the North Sea installations......................................5
Knowledge development and technological advancement.....................................................6
Changes in organisational skill and knowledge.....................................................................7
Statistics related to ALE from cases of HSE and oil and gas industry of UK.......................7
Legislations related to ALE in the North Sea.........................................................................8
Recommendations......................................................................................................................9
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
Reference..................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Oil and gas industry depends heavily on the exploration of the natural resources and it
can be enhanced with the use of installations of the machinery and plants. Studies have
shown that use of these installations has resulted in the high economic recovery of the
resources. The UK gas and oil industry operating at the offshore in North Sea also take the
assistance from the installations as well. In order to maintain integrity throughout the life of
the resources, the use of ageing and life extension of the installations, plant, and equipment is
highly preferred. The ageing and life extension (ALE) assists the operators in the industry to
make a high economic recovery without neglecting the health and safety of the workers
working on the project. However, in many previous instances such as financial crises and
price drops, the operators mainly focused on the production or the operation rather than the
safety of the installations, plants and the equipment engaged in the projects in the offshore of
North Sea. Consequently, there had been a lot of reports of health deterioration and risks of a
worker working in these projects. The aim of this paper is to critically discuss the issues of
these ALE’s from the perspective of health and safety practitioner.
Methods
This paper uses a content analysis method to analyse the risks and the health and risk
issues related to the ALE after the operators started concentrating mainly on the products
rather than the safety and risk. The necessary data and information for the analysis have been
collected from journals and articles related to the topic of the paper.
Findings
The studies have found that, although the life extensions of the installations and
equipment are important, they often compel the management to ignore the health and safety
issues of workers and the project as a whole. These have resulted in life threat to the workers
of the project and the economic loss to the operators. The main reason for the
mismanagement of the project is the violations of legal and the ethical requirements from the
side of the management.

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Discussion
The business case for extending the life of ageing installations in the North Sea
The installations help the operator to enhance their operation so that more and more
economic recovery can be done from the resources in the offshore of North Sea. Silvestre and
Gimenes (2017) stated that resource reserve extraction takes a lot of time and hence the
installations and the plants used in the project are often required to be used beyond their
design philosophy. This also helps in the integrity and the collaboration among the team
working in the project as well. From the perspective of the business of the operators as well,
the use of plants and machinery for an extended period of time saves a huge amount of cost
of the operators. Yang and Haugen (2016) stated that the machinery, equipment and the
plants can be used beyond their planned lifetime meeting the health and ethical requirement
as well. However, post-2014 period the operators only concentrated on the output of the
project ignoring the safety and health of the workers. This violated the health and safety at
work act 1974 of UK regulations and as a result, there were around 71 reported incidents
which affected the lives of the workers at these projects. Falck et al. (2015) commented that
basic ethics which is required to be maintained in order to use the installations and the
equipment beyond their philosophical design was also ignored by the operators. The lack of
adherence to the legal and the ethical requirements of the life extensions of the machinery
also impacted the integrity which is the basic motive for the activity. Briggle (2015) found
out that, the increased life threat and risk associated with the works in the offshore projects
sites, the productivity and the motivation of the workers dropped between the year 2014 and
2016 leading to an insignificant increase in the output despite utmost concentration on the
output maximisation post the oil price drop.
Risk management and asset integrity of the North Sea installations
Risk management and the asset integrity are two of the steps that are supposed to be
taken by the operators when extending the use of the machinery without having security and
health issues for the workers of the projects. The risk assessment is done based on different
dimensions such as the procedure, people, practices, systems and many more. The
methodology to assess the risk, also called the health check is the comparison of the current
status of the system with the benchmark status which is set by the expert health and safety
practitioner of the organisations. In the case of North Sea offshore projects, there were no
available health and safety practitioner in the organisations. Landucci and Paltrinieri (2016)
commented that the benchmark needs to be changed as per the changes in the external

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situations such as the resource availability, status of the environment and many more.
Consequently, the failed gap analysis for the risk assessment ignored the health and the safety
of the workers of the project.
Figure 1: The risk assessment and gap analysis
(Source: Abrahamsen et al. 2018)
Another step that comes under the methodology of the extension of the life of the
equipment and the machinery being used in the North Sea is the asset integrity analysis. This
step is also carried out by the health and safety practitioners of the organisations. This step
studies the capabilities of the existing machinery and the equipment to deal with the
deterioration. The health and safety practitioner, based on the financial capabilities of the
organisation decides the time for which the use of the machinery can be extended. However,
the operators in the North Sea ignored the importance of the assessment of life extensions for
the plants and the machinery causing life threat to the workers of the project. Therefore, the
risk such as erosion, leak, and radiation are common in case of gas and oil industry ignorance
of which also results in the economic loss as well.
Knowledge development and technological advancement
The North Sea has been a popular reserve for hydrocarbon for a long time now and
the use of technologies to increase the economic recovery has been experimented from time

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to time. Some of the technological advancement has also been made in the field of ageing and
life extensions of the equipment and the machinery used in the project. According to Shi et
al. (2015), most of the investments from the side of the operators have been in the field of
ALE of the project. Over the time the operators have understood the importance of ALE in
the economic recovery and the performances of the organisations without impacting the
health of the workers and the officials associated with the projects. In addition to that,
knowledge development is also undertaken from the side of the health and safety practitioner
of the organisation as well. Kenzhetayeva and Fleming (2017) highlighted that the role of the
health and safety practitioner has changed with the advancement of the digital technology.
Earlier the health and the safety used to undertake the gap analysis manually where the
chance of human error would be very costly for the organisations. The technological
advancement and the availability of modern software have enabled the health and safety
practitioners to keep track of the statuses of the systems being used in the project. Besides,
the benchmark-setting related to the changes in the external status of the reserves and the
changing organisational objective also gets easy with the advancement in the technology.
However, required knowledge development of the health and safety practitioner is not
entertained by the management of the organisations. In addition to that, during the output
maximisation phase, the organisations devoted fewer resources for the operation and the
maintenance of the software for the gap analysis and integrity assessment. This led to the
increased risk for the workers in the North Sea hydrocarbon sites.
Changes in organisational skill and knowledge
Changes in the organisational skills and knowledge are inevitable as the changes in
the technology are rapid. The health and safety practitioners of the organisations are at the
positions to evaluate the changes and reflect upon the changes that need to make by the
organisations to ensure the health and the safety of the organisations (Mendhe et al. 2015).
However, implementation of the new knowledge in terms of ALE in oil and gas industry
becomes time-consuming and costly. Thus, organisations often tend to ignore the
requirements using the old practices which in turn harm the lives and the health of the
workers of the projects.
Statistics related to ALE from cases of HSE and oil and gas industry of UK
The statistics related to ALE in case of gas and oil industry of UK also shows that
workers of the project are at the receiving end. There has been a report of 173 loss of
containment in the industry between the year 1996 and 2008. Bucelli et al. (2017) stated that

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this is mostly because of the lack of emphasis provided by the management of the
organisations on the health and the safety of the workers in the sites. This loss of containment
accounts for the 5.5% of all the all loss of containment events in the industry. Boudet et al.
(2018) pointed out that, there has been a limited data available regarding the problem and
hence the real problem could be fatal for the workers in the offshore sites in the North Sea.
Apart from that, MARS database also showed a huge loss of containment due to ageing and
life extension. As per the reports, there has been a loss of 11 lives with 183 workers being
injured along with the economic loss of 170 million Euros. Therefore, many studies have
concluded that extended use of the machinery and the equipment in the oil and gas industry
of UK are being done without the adherence to the ethical and legal requirements. Apart from
that, excessive desire to increase output in order to deal with the decrease in the price also
diverted the emphasis of the management of the operators from the health and safety
requirement of the workers working in the projects in the offshore of North Sea.
Legislations related to ALE in the North Sea
As discussed above, the life extension of the machinery, plants and the equipment are
legal only if some of the rules and the regulations are met by the operators. The health and
safety at work act 1974 is the basic legislation that governs the wellbeing of the workers in
any organisations in the UK. As per the legislation the management have the liability to make
sure that working conditions are safe to an extent that will not harm any of the workers of the
organisation. The injured workers at the North Sea offshore sites have shown that violating
the laws the management of the organisations has neglected the interests of the workers.
Apart from that, Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations
2013 were also implemented in the country in order to make sure the projects do not harm the
lives of the workers. Operators, through the use of ALE without adherence to the ethics and
the legal requirement under this legislation, violated the norms which resulted in the loss of
containment and death of workers. Bjerga and Aven (2016) in this context have cited that, the
governing body of the country and the legislation are not strong enough to bring some serious
consequences to the operators of the industry and hence they are finding it easier to violate
the norms putting the lives of the workers in danger. Apart from these, there are other
legislation related to the ALE in the North Sea as well, which are as follows-
 Management of health and safety at work regulations 1990
 Provision and use of work equipment regulation 1998
 Pipeline safety regulations 1996

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 Offshore installations and pipeline works (management and administration)
regulations 1995
 Offshore installations and wells (design and construction) regulations 1996
 Offshore installations (prevention of fire, explosion, and emergency response)
regulation 1996.
However, it is interesting to note that, many of the studies have found that, a number
of legislation related to the ALE in oil and gas industry of UK has been violated by the
operators in the past. The oil price drop compelled the operators to ignore all the
requirements so that it can only concentrate on output maximisation not knowing how the
lack of adherence reduced the economic value processes instead.
Recommendations
Based on the study of the paper, it is recommended to the government to set up a
strong governing body especially for the interest of the workers. The workers’ health is at risk
at every stage of the process especially during the price output maximisation phase of the
operators of the industry. In addition to that, it is also recommended for the management of
the operating organisations to incorporate safety needs of the workers while initiating
extension process of the machinery in the offshore projects at the North Sea. Internal auditing
system of the operators can be given more responsibilities to ensure that ethical and legal
requirements are properly met.
Conclusion
Thus, the study shows that workers safety is at stake in the oil and the gas industry of
the UK. This risk and the lack of security are further enhanced due to the improper extension
of the machinery and the equipment devoted to the respective projects. The study also has
recognised the requirement of using the ageing components of the projects beyond their
planned term as it helps in the process of operating integrity and reduction of costs. However,
previous mishaps have shown the case of ignorance from the side of the operators and
management. It has, in the past, violated lots of legislation and ethical requirements for ALE
in the oil and gas industry of UK.

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