Designing Safety Regulations for High-Hazard Industries (2018) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 Designing Macro-Means Safety Regulation in High-Hazard Industries
5 Designing Macro-Means Safety Regulation in High-Hazard Industries
Pages 124-139
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 124... ...
In particular, the committee was asked for its advice with respect to the use of regulations that call for management systems to supplement the use of traditional "prescriptive" regulations to promote safety in high-hazard industries such as the pipeline and offshore oil and gas sectors. This chapter begins with a brief review of the preceding chapters of this report and a recap of why the committee has adopted the label "macro-means" for regulations that require firms to establish and maintain safety management systems.
|
From page 125... ...
Some of these risks are well known and can be addressed with highly targeted and trusted interventions; others arise from the complexities of individual facilities, operations, and practices. To address the latter risks, pipeline and offshore safety regulators across the four jurisdictions use macro-means regulations to require firms to create management plans and establish customized internal programs for managing the specific risks created by those firms' facilities and operations.
|
From page 126... ...
In the sections that follow, consideration is given to the reasons U.S., Canadian, and North Sea pipeline and offshore safety regulators have set forth for adopting macro-means regulations and to the challenges they have faced in implementing and enforcing these regulations. RATIONALE FOR USING MACRO-MEANS REGULATION IN HIGH-HAZARD INDUSTRIES Safety regulators of all high-hazard industries are expected to reduce the occurrence of low-frequency, high-consequence events, whose risks can arise from the interaction of many context-specific factors.
|
From page 127... ...
In addition, the regulator may monitor conditions and events believed to be indicative of catastrophic risk, such as reports of conditions known to be associated with failures, operator errors, and so-called "precursor" and "near-miss" events. The aim is to capture relevant data that will allow quantitative methods of risk analysis to inform decisions about future regulatory interventions or modifications in existing interventions, such as changes in required risk management plans and programs.
|
From page 128... ...
Box 5-1 Risk Analysis for Low-Frequency, High-Consequence Events Quantitative risk assessment methods for low-frequency, high-consequence events have been developed and discussed over the past three decades in both the general risk analysis literature (Kunreuther 1994; Waller and Covello 1984) and the petroleum engineering risk analysis literature (Threadgold 2011)
|
From page 129... ...
of that reduction can be causally attributed to PSA's macro-means regulation is unclear. PSA's risk reduction calculation was one of only a few estimates that the committee could find purporting to support a claim about the risk-reducing effects of a regulatory regime that requires safety management plans and programs.
|
From page 130... ...
Thus, acceptance of PSA's calculations that its macro-means regulations have reduced the risk of catastrophes does not mean that a comparable level of risk reduction can be expected from the application of such a regulatory design in other contexts. According to Bennear's 2007 study of macro-means pollution regulations in the United States, facilities in states that had adopted these regulations were no longer showing any statistically significant improvements after 6 years, which suggests either that conditions can change or that the effectiveness of macromeans regulations can decline over time.
|
From page 131... ...
Firms in a regulated industry may differ not only in their facilities, technologies, and operations but also in their size and in their managerial and analytic sophistication. For example, firms in the pipeline industries of the United States and Canada range from multinational corporations operating transcontinental oil and gas transmission pipelines to public utilities operating local gas distribution networks.
|
From page 132... ...
These differences are relevant to the ability of firms to comply with regulations as well as to perceptions about the practicality and utility of a particular regulatory design. For these reasons, the European chemical sector is regulated through a mix of regulatory designs, including macro-means regulations requiring management systems and safety cases and a collection of micro-means and micro-ends regulations targeting specific risks.
|
From page 133... ...
The regulations administered by these five regulators provide a rich set of examples of regulation design types and insight into how each regulator's capabilities can affect the suitability of regulatory design choices. All five regulators use macro-means regulations requiring operators
|
From page 134... ...
In this respect, the regulators view themselves as joint problem solvers with industry, and that view extends to the role government officials play in enforcement.3 UK and Norwegian regulators deploy teams of skilled personnel to operators' facilities, and team leaders meet with facility managers to verify that the actions promised in plans are being taken. Before they issue citations for observed instances of noncompliance with the approved management plans, the regulators try to work with operators to resolve any deficiencies.
|
From page 135... ...
Whether the U.S. or North Sea regulatory approaches are more effective in promoting offshore safety was not considered in this report.
|
From page 136... ...
5 PHMSA Gas Integrity Management Inspection Manual: Inspection Protocols with Results Forms, August 2013 (https://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/gasimp/documents.htm)
|
From page 137... ...
For example, audit teams are asked to verify that the operator's threat identification has considered interactive threats, that risk assessments were revised as necessary as new information was obtained or conditions changed on the pipeline segments, and that the operator has checked the data for accuracy. Audit teams are instructed to review operator records to the point where they can achieve an "adequate understanding regarding the degree of an operator's commitment to compliance with applicable requirements and/or the degree to which the operator's program has been effective with respect to achieving compliance."6 It is unclear whether the more thorough audit protocol for pipeline transmission systems is better suited to the enforcement of PHMSA's macromeans IM regulations than the simpler DIMP checklist used by state inspectors.
|
From page 138... ...
Several points that were discussed in Chapter 4 bear highlighting: • The regulator will want to develop the capability to assess the quality of a firm's management plans in terms of criteria such as comprehensiveness, degree of efficacy, adequacy of internal monitoring and controls, and commitment to implementation and improvement over time. • The regulator will want to assure a strong connection between what a firm's management plan calls for and what actually happens at a complex facility.
|
From page 139... ...
2015. Positive and Normative Analysis of Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling Regulations in the U.S., U.K., and Norway.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.