Human Reliability Analysis for Oil and Gas Operations: Analysis of Existing Methods

Abstract

In the petroleum industry, Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) has been one of the main tools for risk management. To date, QRA has mostly focused on technical barriers, despite many accidents having human failure as a primary cause or a contributing factor. Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) allows for the assessment of the human contribution to risk to be assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Most credible and highly advanced HRA methods have largely been developed and applied in support of nuclear power plants control room operations and in context of probabilistic risk analysis. Moreover, many of the HRA methods have issues that have led to inconsistencies, insufficient traceability and reproducibility in both the qualitative and quantitative phases. Given the need to assess human error in the context of the oil industry, it is necessary to evaluate available HRA methodologies and assess its applicability to petroleum operations. Furthermore, it is fundamental to assess these methods against good practices of HRA and the requirements for advanced HRA methods. The present paper accomplishes this by analyzing seven HRA methods. The evaluation of the methods was performed in three stages. The first stage consisted of an evaluation of the degree of adaptability of the method for the Oil and Gas industry. In the second stage the methods were evaluated against desirable items in an HRA method. The higher-ranked methods were evaluated, in the third stage, against requirements for advanced HRA methods. In addition to the methods' evaluation, this paper presents an overview of state-of-the-art discussions on HRA, led by the Nuclear industry community. It remarks that these discussions must be seriously considered in defining a technical roadmap to a credible HRA method for the Oil and Gas industry.