Oil Search currently operates around 40,000 boe/d of production from seven fields in Papua New Guinea (PNG), with an additional 400 MMcf/d of gas processing and re-injection. The company is also a major stakeholder in the ExxonMobil operated PNG LNG Project, which is set to produce approximately 6.6 MMt/a of LNG once completed.

In 1998 Oil Search took over operatorship of the Hides gas-to-electricity project and, in late 2003, took over operatorship of the Kutubu, Gobe and Moran oil fields, immediately embarking upon projects to develop the North West Moran (NWM) and South East Mananda (SEM) fields.

The SEM and NWM projects saw over 500 new people come into the field to construct new flowlines and facilities in rugged and inaccessible jungle. This workforce included many local landowners, and Australian and Asian contractors, most living in bush camps accessible only by helicopter.

The 100, 150 and 200 mm diameter flowlines were constructed above ground from pipe bent offsite and strung by helicopter into narrow, hand-cleared rights-of-way (RoWs). All traffic along the RoWs was by foot or helicopter.

To add to the construction challenges, the SEM project required the construction of a 470 m long pipeline suspension bridge over a gorge more than 400 m deep.

These development projects, coinciding with an increase in drilling activity, led to an increase in Oil Search’s incident rates. Approximately halfway through these projects, with around 1.5 million man-hours remaining, the combined projects had a total recordable incident frequency rate (TRIFR) of nine incidents per million man hours. This was substantially better than international pipeline industry performance standards, both at that time and today, but significantly higher than the rest of Oil Search’s PNG operations.

There were also several high-potential, near-miss incidents experienced. These near-miss incidents, combined with the substantial increase in incident rates, led to Oil Search assuming a more direct health, safety, and environment management role on the projects.

In order to do this the company deployed a team of experienced people from its seismic and production operations. This team worked closely with all contractors, their supervisors and the workforce, and focused heavily on risk assessment, job hazard analysis (JHA), incident investigation, and direct workforce engagement through PNG citizen safety officers.

This programme resulted in a significant drop in incident rates, by approximately half in the second half of the project despite mobilisation of multiple new crews to recover schedule. The projects were completed with a TRIFR of seven and zero lost-time incidents (LTIs) from the more than 3 million man-hours worked.

In a subsequent project to hook up two new Moran oil field wells the implementation of the safety management practices developed on SEM and NWM resulted in a low rate of construction incidents, with a TRIFR of 2.5. Tragically, however, a helicopter crash resulted in three fatalities, permanent incapacitation of the pilot, and injuries to three other workers on this project.

A new tactic

After the completion of these projects in 2006, Oil Search decided to roll its various project delivery functions into a single team covering such diverse works as process plant and pipeline construction, corrosion and integrity management, well-pad civil works, in-field civil construction and maintenance, infrastructure construction, and delivery of community infrastructure under a tax-credit scheme. These legacy teams had diverse safety cultures and a wide range of safety compliance and performance levels. In forming the unified projects team, the decision was taken to homogenise the group’s safety culture and practices through a back-to-basics approach (dubbed the KISS programme) that focused on the following elements:

• Planning: making time in each project to plan upfront, particularly risk assessment, logistics and training;
• Risk assessment: ensuring a risk assessment is undertaken for every project and that this forms the basis of site-management plans and supervisor tasking. The result of the risk assessment, typically in the form of a site-specific safety plan, is rolled out in a supervisor pre-commencement meeting between Oil Search and contractor(s);
• Work face tools: a strong focus on the basic JHA and ‘step-back’ 5x5 tools;
• Review: supervisor safety tours, STOP and hazard identification cards, and ensuring that the workforce actively participates in these with results that are fed back to the workforce; and,
• Incident investigation: a strong emphasis was placed on near-miss incident investigation.

The results of this approach and the intensive mentoring of Oil Search and contractor supervisors by the Projects Department’s HSE team (made up largely of the same team deployed to the SEM and NWM projects) gave rise to a dramatic improvement in lead indicator performance matched by a year-on-year drop in incident rates from a TRIFR of seven in 2006, to a TRIFR of one in 2009.

In 2008, Oil Search mobilised a major new contractor for non-construction work in PNG. Many of the lessons learned from past mobilisations were applied in this process. Despite this, incident rates in that area of the business rose sharply for a short period and reached as high as a TRIFR of 35 during mobilisation before stabilising around a TRIFR of 15 after a year’s work.

Looking back at the mobilisation, the following was noted:

• The contractor observed that, while its supervisors knew the required outcomes, they did not always know how to achieve them (tools/tactics). Training is now (often) followed by onsite mentoring by the trainers;
• High turnover of supervisors: requiring significant re-training;
• Poor quality of incident investigation: training provided, but not always successfully used by supervisors;
• Supervisors were often poor at recognising hazardous situations, often because they were engaged in assisting in the performance of the task and not taking the higher-level supervisor’s overview due to workforce skill level and communication difficulties;
• The workforce was keener to “please the boss” than work safely: if combined with poor supervisor communication this was shown to be potentially very hazardous;
• A “cloud of responsibility” was identified, where several supervisors observed hazardous activity but none thought they were in charge; and
• Poor quality JHAs: needed to audit more heavily.

A concerted effort by Oil Search and the contractor to address these issues resulted in the 12-month moving average TRIFR for this contractor dropping to below four by the end of 2009 and continuing to improve.

Projects delivered safely

Since assuming operatorship of the PNG oil fields in 2003, Oil Search has achieved outstanding results in HSE management.

The graph demonstrates that the company’s combined TRIFR for production, drilling, seismic, and project operations has been consistently world-class and benchmarks well with international oil and gas producers’ performance, albeit as described above this improvement in performance has not been without setbacks.

Oil Search is currently mobilising for multiple projects worth approximately $US400 million as part of the PNG LNG Project. These include projects to extend the life of the oil export system pipelines and offshore facility to suit storage and export of condensate from the main upstream gas processing plant, as well as modifications to the main oil-processing facilities to enable gas export. This work will again introduce new contractors and hundreds of new people to Oil Search’s PNG operations. Oil Search is currently working with those contractors to apply its lessons learned and set the foundation for incident-free project delivery.