DNV DNV-RP-G104 PDF

With respect to harm to people and the environment, a MA is an incident that results in a level of damage to people and the environment that meets defined MA criteria. The MA criteria may vary around the world.

The EU offshore safety directive defines a MA as:

a) an incident involving an explosion, fire, loss of well control, or release of oil, gas or dangerous substances involving, or with a significant potential to cause, fatalities or serious personal injury

b) an incident leading to serious damage to the installation or connected infrastructure involving, or with a significant potential to cause, fatalities or serious personal injury

c) any other incident leading to fatalities or serious injury to five or more persons who are on the offshore installation where the source of danger occurs or who are engaged in an offshore oil and gas operation in connection with the installation or connected infrastructure

d) any MEI resulting from incidents referred to in points (a), (b) and (c).

Criteria (a), (b) and (c) relate to harm to people and (d), which is conditional on (a), (b) or (c) being met, relates to harm to the environment. The EU offshore safety directive therefore places a duty on offshore operators to manage MEI risks only when the incidents have the potential to result from a MA that has significant potential to cause fatalities or serious personal injury.

In most situations, environmental incidents on or in connection with an offshore installation will have the potential to cause significant harm to people and will therefore be covered by the EU offshore safety directive. There may be situations for a major release to the environment to occur without the potential to cause harm to people (e.g. a large chemical spill to sea, or a large leak from the diesel transfer system or crude discharge system, or a large incident occurring outside the 500 m safety zone such as a large sub-sea pipeline leak). Such incidents (termed MPIs in this RP) would be outside the requirements of the EU offshore safety directive. DNV considers that it is good practice that the risks from both MEIs and MPIs are effectively managed.

This RP covers the identification and the use of critical elements in the management of environmental risk for both:

— MEIs that meet the EU offshore safety directive MA criteria (which are termed SECEs in the RP).

— MPIs which have potential for major environmental damage, but no potential for significant harm to people (which are termed ECEs in the RP).

This RP does not address the risk management of small polluting events or the breach of discharge limits in environmental permits.

Note: Organisations operating offshore installations will have a health, safety and environment (HS&E) risk management system and this RP assumes that the reader has a basic understanding of risk management principles. As such, this RP does not attempt to describe these, but focusses on the specific RP objectives. If the reader wishes to better understand the principles of risk management, DNV recommends International Organisation for Standardisation ISO 31000 Risk Management – Principles and Guidelines/3/ and ISO 17776 Petroleum and natural gas industries – Offshore production installations – Guidelines on tools and techniques for hazard identification and risk assessment which describes the framework for risk management and the systematic risk management process.

The scope of this RP is illustrated in Figure 1-1.