Conclusions
The current and recent historical situation with regard to health hazards in the offshore oil and gas industries can be summarized in three key points.
Exposures to health hazards inherent to the raw product have been relatively stable over recent decades.
After nearly a century of experience, and with relatively stable and mature processes, chemicals, and engineering facilities, the health risks offshore are relatively well understood and can be considered in the five categories forming the basis of the health risk assessment (HRA) process;
There are few published studies presenting accurate and reliable data on health issues compared with the ‘downstream’ (refining, etc.) petroleum industry. This is probably partly due to commercial sensitivities, as well as to the rapid and often relatively short-time scale of many upstream operations. The data that are available also tend to be western-centric, with very little information on health issues in the developing world.
The upstream petroleum industry is facing major changes in the future macroeconomic climate in many ways. Two of these are particularly important for health:
The move to difficult oil;
The continuation of the long-term trend for societies globally to be less willing to accept risk arising from commercial activities.
Across the industry, the health function in major companies is responding to these changes in a number of ways, including the following:
By improving the ability to predict and model potential health risks (in ways similar to how explosion and noise modelling are currently conducted).
By seeking to develop health functions that are capable of integrating with project development processes to ensure barriers against health risks are effectively strengthened as each layer of defence is developed (engineering, procedures, training and personal protective equipment).