Impact of Incident Reporting on Operational Risk Management and Accident Prevention in FPSO Operations in Nigeria

Abstract

Abstract The exploration and production of oil and gas in deep waters is very challenging and comes with high operational risks especially in offshore rigs and Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facilities. The incidents associated with the operation of an FPSO could be catastrophic with ripple effects that involves socioeconomic, environmental, health and reputational damages as experienced in the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, which has been described as one of the most catastrophic accident in the history of the oil and gas industry in the US, considering the huge lost recorded. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to reveal how effective incident reporting can enhance risk reduction and accident prevention in offshore oil and gas facilities with emphasis on the FPSO facilities in the Nigerian Gulf of Guinea and beyond. Mix method of collection data was use, and qualitative and quantitative data were obtained through literature review; semi-structured interviews and online survey. The method of data analysis was Qualitative Analysis method where a Narrative Analysis was used to analyze data from online survey and semi-structured interviews and analysis carried out on how incident reporting can reduce risk and prevent accident. Emphasis is on the need for behavioral change and development of safety culture of unsafe act and unsafe condition reporting as a strategy to prevent accident occurrence was analyzed. This research succeeded in developing a template and a framework for incident reporting that can be adopted in any deep offshore oil and gas projects and operations, especially in FPSO operations, to enhance risk management, accident prevention, enhance operational sustainability and business profitability