Capstone: an orientation and hazard review for a well pad and battery

This capstone brings the course together at the invented Pinecrest pad and battery. A well servicing crew is about to arrive to work over one of the eight producing wells while the rest of the pad and the battery keep producing. You have been asked, as a new field safety coordinator for Larchwood Resources, to do three things: review the site before the crew arrives and rank what you find, prepare the site-specific orientation the crew will receive, and check the emergency arrangements for the job. Each part uses the lessons of this course, and each points ahead to the deeper courses in the oil and gas sites track.

The site, people and findings in this lesson are invented for teaching. They are typical of real sites, and the way of working, walking the site with the energy wheel in mind, ranking findings by risk and turning them into specific actions, applies anywhere.

The job and the site

The job is a five-day workover of well 4 on the Pinecrest pad, about 40 miles (64 km) south of Watford City, North Dakota, to replace production tubing. A well servicing contractor will bring a workover rig, a pump truck, a tank truck and a crew of seven; a wireline company will attend for one day; and trucking contractors will haul fluids. The operator's company man will be on site daily. The other seven wells will keep producing to the tank battery, which has an inlet separator, a heater-treater, a compressor, four tanks, a flare and a pipeline riser. Associated gas contains about 0.5 percent hydrogen sulfide (5,000 ppm). The lease road is 9 miles (14 km) of gravel. It is late October, with daytime temperatures near 32 °F (0 °C), frequent wind and early darkness. Larchwood's company man will act as the controlling employer's representative on site.

Part 1: the pre-job site review

You walk the site two days before the job with the lease operator, using the energy wheel to prompt each form of energy and checking against the lessons of this course. The figure shows the site and the numbered findings, and the table lists them.

Ranking the findings

Not every finding is equally urgent. A simple risk matrix scores each finding for likelihood and severity from 1 to 5 and multiplies the two, as HSE-103 explained. The program below ranks the findings and assigns a response: findings scoring 15 or more must be fixed before the crew arrives, those from 8 to 14 need controls in place before the related task starts, and the rest go on the action list. The scores reflect the judgment of the review team; another team might score some differently, which is why scoring should be done together and the reasoning recorded.

findings = [  # (number, short description, likelihood 1-5, severity 1-5)
    (1, "second wind sock hidden", 4, 4),
    (2, "tank 2 hatch does not seal; manual gauging", 4, 5),
    (3, "rig mast within reach of power line", 3, 5),
    (4, "private flowline under pump truck spot", 3, 5),
    (5, "two monitors past calibration", 3, 5),
    (6, "pump jack fence missing", 3, 4),
    (7, "mismatched hammer union in iron", 3, 5),
    (8, "muster point downwind in prevailing wind", 4, 4),
    (9, "informal night journey management", 3, 4),
    (10, "SIMOPS plan misses truck loading", 3, 4),
]
def action(score):
    if score >= 15:
        return "fix before crew arrives"
    if score >= 8:
        return "control before related task"
    return "action list"
ranked = sorted(findings, key=lambda f: (-f[2] * f[3], f[0]))
for n, text, like, sev in ranked:
    s = like * sev
    print(f"#{n:<2} score {s:2d}  {action(s):28}  {text}")
print("Fix before arrival:", sum(1 for f in findings if f[2] * f[3] >= 15), "of", len(findings))

#2  score 20  fix before crew arrives       tank 2 hatch does not seal; manual gauging
#1  score 16  fix before crew arrives       second wind sock hidden
#8  score 16  fix before crew arrives       muster point downwind in prevailing wind
#3  score 15  fix before crew arrives       rig mast within reach of power line
#4  score 15  fix before crew arrives       private flowline under pump truck spot
#5  score 15  fix before crew arrives       two monitors past calibration
#7  score 15  fix before crew arrives       mismatched hammer union in iron
#6  score 12  control before related task   pump jack fence missing
#9  score 12  control before related task   informal night journey management
#10 score 12  control before related task   SIMOPS plan misses truck loading
Fix before arrival: 7 of 10

Seven findings must be fixed before the crew arrives. The damaged tank hatch, combined with manual gauging on a sour site, scores highest, because the NIOSH and OSHA alert on tank gauging deaths shows how likely and how severe that exposure can be. The power line, the unlocated flowline, the out-of-date monitors and the mismatched union could each kill someone outright. The muster point downwind in the prevailing wind and the hidden wind sock would send people the wrong way in an H2S release. The other three findings still need controls before the related work starts.

Turning findings into actions

Each finding needs a specific action with an owner and a date, not a general reminder. For the highest-ranked findings, the actions agreed were:

• Tank 2: replace the hatch gasket before the job, stop manual gauging of tank 2 until it seals, and bring forward the planned installation of remote tank gauging (Lesson 6).
• Power line: move the rig position 50 ft (15 m) east so that the raised mast stays outside the limit of approach, mark the line with goal posts and require a spotter for all mast and boom movements (Lesson 8).
• Private flowline: arrange a private locate, mark the line, move the pump truck location off it and add a ground protection mat where vehicles must cross (Lesson 9).
• Gas monitors: remove the two overdue monitors from the shack, calibrate them, and check that every worker's personal monitor is bumped daily (Lesson 5).
• Hammer union: remove it from the site and check the remaining iron for matched, certified ratings before rig-up (Lesson 7).
• Muster point and wind sock: relocate the second muster point to the north-east, install an extra wind sock visible from the rig, and update the site plan and ERP (Lessons 3 and 11).

Part 2: the site-specific orientation

The service crew, the wireline crew and the truck drivers have all completed industry orientation and H2S training, but none has been to Pinecrest. The orientation you prepare should take about twenty minutes, be given at the start of the first shift and whenever a new person arrives, and cover the topics in the table from Lesson 3, made specific to this job. Its key messages for Pinecrest are:

• Who is in charge: Larchwood's company man, acting for the controlling employer, and the well servicing contractor's rig supervisor, with their radio channel and phone numbers.
• The hazards that make Pinecrest different: sour gas at 5,000 ppm in the producing wells and battery, simultaneous production during the workover, the overhead line, the private flowlines, and the pump jacks that start on timers.
• Site rules: four-gas monitors bumped and worn at all times; no entry to the battery or tank tops without the lease operator's permission; no manual gauging of tank 2; permits for hot work and line opening; phones only in the site trailer and vehicles; parking in the marked area facing out.
• Alarms and emergencies: what the site H2S alarm sounds like, the two muster points and how to choose between them by the wind socks, headcount at the muster point, never attempting an unprotected rescue, and the air ambulance landing area and road travel time to hospital.
• Coordination: daily 07:00 meeting for all companies on site, SIMOPS controls for truck loading during the workover, and stop work authority for everyone.
• Reporting: report hazards, near misses and injuries to the company man and your own supervisor; you can stop or refuse work you believe is unsafe.

A good orientation is a conversation, not a lecture. Walk the crew to the muster points, show them the wind socks and the overhead line, and ask each person to say which muster point they would use if the wind were from the south-east. Check understanding rather than collecting signatures alone.

Part 3: checking the emergency arrangements

The workover changes the site's emergency picture. More people are on site, a rig is working on a sour well, fluids are being trucked, and darkness falls early. The checks you make with the wellsite supervisor and rig manager are:

What the track covers next

This course has given an orientation-level view of oil and gas sites. The next three courses go deeper into the work that most often goes wrong:

• HSE-331, Drilling and Well Site Hazards: rig floor and pipe handling, well control basics, well servicing and completions, and working with drilling contractors.
• HSE-332, Facility and Pipeline Safety: batteries, compressor stations and gas plants, pressurized equipment, isolation and blinding, pipeline right-of-way hazards, pigging and maintenance.
• HSE-333, Permit to Work and Isolation in Oil and Gas: safe work permits, energy isolation planning, simultaneous operations and permit handover.