Typhoon Offshore Safe and Clean: Authentic Leadership to Produce an Incident and Injury-Free Environment
Authors: Visser C. , Williams Joseph D. , Aquadro Bob 
Published: October 2008

Chevron and BHP Billiton, together with contractors, successfully completed the offshore installation and start-up of the Gulf of Mexico deepwater Typhoon facility without a recordable injury. The project team provided strong leadership that created an environment for working incident and injury-free. Leadership focused on the health and well being of workers, versus implementing additional Environmental and Safety rules, procedures and programs.

The challenge facing the project was to achieve incident and injury-free performance across multiple companies with multiple interfaces and work scopes. The effort started with a strong commitment from the Project Manager and his project Leadership team declaring that no one would get hurt. The project contractors and Chevron Operations, who all have very good Environmental and Safety programs and performance, were asked to take on this commitment for all workers on the project. Commitment/Orientation workshops were conducted for all employees involved on the project prior to working offshore. This developed a consistent commitment across all companies. Workers' perceptions shifted to a belief that Management really valued their safety, versus holding safety as a high priority influenced by the progress on the schedule. A work environment was created by Supervisors and workers where at-risk work was routinely confronted and corrected. This paper reviews how the Typhoon deepwater projectcreated an environment for incident and injury-free work and completed the project without a recordable injury.

Background

The Typhoon field is located in 2,097 feet of water and straddles Green Canyon blocks 236 and 237 in the Gulf of Mexico. The Typhoon field was discovered in mid-1998. Chevron and BHP Billiton each are 50% partners in the field, with Chevron being the operator. The Development facilities include a SeaStar Tension Leg Platform (TLP), four subsea wells tied back to the TLP with flexible flowlines and umbilicals, and third party export oil and gas pipelines. The TLP hull is 58 feet in diameter and the main column is 148 feet tall. The topsides are designed for 40,000 b/d of oil, 60 million scf/d of gas and 15,000 b/d of water production. Thereis one 18-inch steel catenary riser (SCR) for gas export and one 10-inch SCR for oil export.

The scope of installation and offshore start-up encompassed installation of foundation piles, installation of tendons, hull lift/ballast/hookup, oil and gas SCR installation and topsides lift and hookup using a heavy lift vessel. Following the topsides installation, multiple vessels and contractors were on site for 36 days, hooking up the export SCR's to the export pipelines, commissioning the pipelines and installing/commissioning the flowlines and umbilicals between the subsea wells and the TLP. Additionally, during this time, topsides process facilities hookup and commissioning was occurring. Many of the contractors and/or vessels were only onsite for periods as short as 2 days. Over 600 workers were involved in the installation and start-up at the offshore site for a total period of 57 days.