Safety Performance of the Global E&P Industry 2002
Authors: Smith Don 
Published: October 2008

Since 1985 the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers1 (OGP) has been collecting, analysing and reporting safety performance data on behalf of the global E&P industry. For 2002, OGP received over 2,000 million workhours of E&P safety performance data, submitted by 35 companies from their operations in 71 countries.

The paper presents the results from the analysis of the 2002 dataset. The 2002 statistics are compared to those of the proceeding 11 year period.

Analysis of the data shows that over the period 1991-2002 the industry has achieved a considerable improvement in its Lost Time Injury Frequency (LTIF), however little improvement is seen in Fatal Accident Rate (FAR) or Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR). For 2002, all these high level indicators were reported at their lowest values on record. In common with previous years, the most common types of incident leading to fatalities were vehicle related incidents, and persons being struck by moving or falling objects.

Introduction

The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP: http://www.ogp.org.uk) has, since 1985, been collecting and reporting data relating to the safety performance of the global upstream oil and gas industry. This it has done through a series of annual publications, the latest of which is 'Safety Performance of the Global E&P Industry' [1].

These reports serve a range of purposes. Firstly, they present to the widest audience possible how the industry has performed, year on year, on a range of key safety measures. Secondly, they allow E&P organisations to benchmark their performance against that of their peers. Thirdly, they help the industry to identify areas where it may need to concentrate effort. Most recently this has led to the formation of an OGP Land Transportation Safety Task Force, the aim of which is to 1 Formerly E&P Forum identify initiatives that may help to reduce the number of vehicle related incidents.

This paper presents the results of the analysis of the 2002 dataset. Industry recognised safety performance indicators are presented; Fatal Accident Rate (FAR), Fatal Incident Rate (FIR), Lost Time Injury Frequency (LTIF) and Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR). The 2002 data are compared with data from the preceeding 11-year period. The performance of both company and contractor personnel are compared, as are onshore and offshore performance indicators.

The paper provides a summary of the key features of 2002 safety performance statistics. The full analysis, including descriptions of each fatal incident and descriptions of significant incidents reported to OGP, is available within the annual report [1]Figure 1: Number of Workhours on which Safety Performance Statistics are based (Available in full paper) Figure 1 shows how the number of workhours on which the annual safety performance reports are based has increased since 1985. The figure shows both the company and contractor hours that were reported over this period. The substantial increase in hours associated with contractor activities is evident. The total number of hours reported in 2002 was 2,121 million. This represents the largest number of hours available for analysis since data collection began.