| dc.description.abstract | With every passing year, the consumption of energy around the world is increasing at an exponential scale. Hence, the presence of oil in the Barents sea have become an exciting prospect for the Oil exploration companies. However the Barents Sea isa very ecologically sensitive area in the Arctic. It is an important breeding ground for Cod and other fish species. There are also challenging working conditions that may influence safety such as danger of long dark winter months with the presence of huge floating icebergs. Added to this is the fact that oil production leads to huge discharges in the ocean. Hence, this thesis focuses on developing a method/model to assess the risk due to accidental discharge in the Barents sea. This thesis was approached with an extensive literature survey which includes adetailed information on the Barents sea, oil production systems and oil discharges. Extensive research was conducted concerning FPSO systems, shuttle tankers and tandem offloading operations. The risk of oil discharge was assessed using both qualitative and quantitative risk analysis methods. The qualitative risk analysis included bow tie assessment of the FPSO system and human and organisational factors. The quantitative risk analysis included a Bayesian belief network to model the discharge risk in Barents sea by taking into account different actors and their mutual influences. The overall question to be addressed is whether the Barents Sea is more riskier than the other seas to carry out oil production. The analysis revealed that the probability of significant oil discharge is not that high and oil production can be carried out with a satisfactory risk level with extra attention paid to reduce human errors andusage of high quality materials to withstand the harsh weather. | |