Erha and Erha North Development: Safety Partnerships Produce World-Class Results
Authors: McDonnell R.A. , Isiaka O.M. , Barclay P. , Mugnier-Pollet M. , Underland H. 
Published: March 2009

Executing major offshore oil and gas projects safely is an ever increasing challenge given the scope, complexity, and schedule constraints inherent to these projects. Remaining viable and competitive requires world-class safety performance, which does not happen by chance.

ExxonMobil promotes a philosophy that a work environment should be one in which "nobody gets hurt." To realize this goal, safety must be everyone's business. The Erha and Erha North Project recognized that adopting a partnership approach to safety with its engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractors and their subcontractors would be a pivotal step in making safety everyone's business. Through the judicious use of meetings, workshops, and metrics, the Project fostered a relationship with the management teams of the EPC contractors, which focused on safe work execution. Sharing a common vision and commitment to safety, the management teams of the various EPC contractors in turn fostered similar relationships with their subcontractors and associated site teams. The collective belief that when it comes to safety "either we succeed together or fail together" formed the foundation for a safe project.

This paper discusses the steps taken to form, maintain, and grow safety partnerships throughout the various phases of the Project and how these partnerships succeeded in driving safe work execution. Also discussed are results generated by the safety partnership, including an overall lost time incident rate (LTIR) of 0.01 and a total recordable incident rate (TRIR) of 0.3, and how lessons learned during work execution have been used to improve the partner's safety management practices.

Introduction

In May 1993, ExxonMobil affiliate Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria Limited (EEPNL) and its co-venturer acquired the rights to explore offshore Oil Prospecting Lease (OPL) 209, which was converted to Oil Mining License (OML) 133 in March 2006. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is the concessionaire of the block. OML 133 is operated by EEPNL with a 56.25% working interest, and Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company is the only co-venturer with 43.75% working interest.

The Erha and Erha North development, located in 1,200 m water approximately 97 km offshore Nigeria, consists of three subsea drill centers tied back to the FPSO. Drill Centers East and West (DCE and DCW) are located approximately 1.5 km from the FPSO, and Drill Center North (DCN) is an 8-km subsea tieback to DCE. The subsea production system includes trees and manifolds connected to 6-in. and 10-in. insulated steel flowlines that tie back to the FPSO via steel catenary risers (SCRs). Injection fluids are transferred from the FPSO via the SCRs and flowlines for subsea injection at the drill centers. The FPSO is a new-build, spread-moored vessel with installed capacity for 210,000 barrels per day (bpd) oil processing, 150,000 bpd water injection, and 340 million standard cubic feet per day (Mscfd) of gas injection. Processed crude is stored in the FPSO and regularly offloaded to tankers through two 22-in. offloading lines and catenary anchor leg mooring (CALM) offloading buoy. Figure 1 provides the field layout.