Applicability Of Hazop To Under-balanced Drilling Surface Facilities In Hmd Field.

Throughout the carrying out of drilling and testing operations, several of the activities have the potential for negative impact on the health and safety of workers, on the environment and on the equipment or installation being used. The potential for HSE troubles rises whenever a new process that is different from the ordinary activity is introduced. Such is the case of reduced head or under-balanced operations on a drilling site. These operations are considerably different from the conventional drilling approach. This was primarily because they involve working in a live well, and because of the specialized nature of the additional equipment included. To ensure a safe and efficient operation, the supervisors and crews executing these operations have to be familiar with the process, the equipment and more importantly with the HSE procedures. Therefore, in setting up an Under-balanced Drilling (UBD) project, it is critical that HSE issues are considered and safety critical systems are tested and investigated. It was felt that a systematic hazard study would be very likely to lead to Improvements in equipment design and in operating procedures which would significantly improve safety. Such consideration lead to the Initiation of a Hazard Evaluation program to identify and control system hazards related to the process of under-balanced drilling. However, the main challenge when testing safety-critical systems is to decide what to test. At the top level the answer to this question is straightforward – we should test that nothing dangerous can happen when we use the system. From this, it follows that in order to test for safety we need to know and understand what can go wrong –That is identifying and evaluating the system’s hazards. HAZOP is one of the most comprehensive and systematic methods for identification and evaluation of hazards in process systems. It is believed that such an approach could be as effective in identifying safety and operability problems for underbalanced drilling systems as it proved to be for topsides process equipment and for chemical-type plants.