Citation

Stackhouse MR, Stewart R. Risk Anal. 2017; 37(1): 130-146.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Society for Risk Analysis, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article reviews risk accommodation strategies in the oil and gas industry, as found in three different analyses of oil and gas companies' incidents over a 12-month period. The authors are focusing on two aspects: how the oil and gas industry is performing at risk mitigation in terms of finding and fixing errors when they occur, and the factors in the work environment that may relate to a risk-accommodating environment. The three studies use a descriptive evaluation of high-consequence incidents at 34 oil and gas companies (N = 873); each of the incidents were rated on a scale from weak to fair to strong. Most investigations of accidents were found to be "fair," (75%) with 11.4% found to be "weak" and 13.2% to be "strong." The authors note that most companies took some corrective action after high-consequence incidents, but could confirm only few of these corrective actions as being completed (14%). The authors contend that most corrective actions were secondary interim administrative controls (e.g., having a safety meeting) rather than fair or strong controls (e.g., training, engineering elimination). Other topics covered include the corporate environment factors that may help explain the variance in safety; the concept of a safety culture; factors that could impede safety effectiveness; the role of training; and the level of management engagement with safety concerns.

Keywords

Safety programs; Safety management; Risk management; Training; Industrial accidents; Gas industry; Petroleum industry; Pipeline companies