New survey claims operational risk is prevalent in hydrocarbon industry

A survey conducted by hazardous industries’ software solutions developer Petrotechnics has revealed that operational risk is prevalent in the hydrocarbon industry.

The 2017 Operational Risk and Process Safety Management survey collected insights from more than 200 senior industry leaders, revealing that only 6% of them are of the opinion that their companies are fully prepared to take up their scheduled safety-critical maintenance.

Around 61% of the respondents identified operational excellence as essential for improving safety performance, while 59% believed process safety management (PSM) was not always fully embedded into operational excellence strategies.

Petrotechnics professional services head Simon Jones said: “The low percentage of companies achieving their scheduled safety-critical maintenance is startling.

“Safety is a top priority in hazardous industries, but these results demonstrate that operators may be exposing themselves to increased major accident hazard risk.”

Reducing operational and major accident hazard (MAH) risk was cited by 71% as a key area for enhancing safety performance.

However, 57% responded that companies do not always have a particular strategy for advancing safety performance, and 77% stated that companies are not always ready to recognise their exposure to risk.

80% of respondents felt that regulations and technology have helped the industry in terms of operational safety.

Unless the workforce and management had access to real-time process safety risk indicators on the plant, risk awareness and safety would not be improved, according to 90% of participants.

Jones added: “The survey exposes important gaps in organisations’ ability to develop a single, shared view of the operational reality. This critical information should be accessible to everyone, from boardroom to frontline, and is essential to reducing exposure to MAH risk.”

“The good news is process safety, operational risk and asset integrity professionals understand the complex nature of the challenges they face, and the organisational, cultural and technological hurdles to overcome. The goal now is to deploy systems that enable organisations to bring PSM into the fold of operational excellence.”