by Éder Henriqson
Drilling and production of oil and gas in deepwater is a technology and safety-critical challenge. It requires intense technology innovation, specialized labour forces and considerable financial investments. Companies often need to develop new technologies due to the geological conditions they face especially when operating in new fields. Despite the intense engineering for safe technologies and processes, residual uncertainties and associated risks are always part of the business demanding system’s capacity to cope with them. Technological and social heterogeneity along with large scale of distributed and integrated offshore operations turn such sites a unique “living laboratory” for applied and interdisciplinary research.
In the pre-salt offshore area of Libra in Brazil, since 2017, PUCRS (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul) is leading a research project for a consortium of five energy companies that are currently drilling and setting up large-scale productions. This research project aims at developing a human factors program by means of an interdisciplinary effort connecting disciplines such as management, psychology, engineering, economics, sociology, social work and environmental sciences. Applied resilience engineering is an important driver of the project and also an intellectual enterprise, as well as exploring “safety differently” and “safety II” principles. Preliminary results were presented in the Offshore Technology Conference in Rio de Janeiro (2019) and in the REA Symposium, in Kalmar (2019). Dr Eduardo Giugliani (giugliani@pucrs.br) is the Project Manager and REA member Dr. Éder Henriqson (ehenriqson@pucrs.br) is the leader of the Scientific Committee of the project.