The Influence of Maintenance on Some Selected Major Accidents

In spite of large and increasing efforts to control major accident risk, a number of serious accidents over the last few years have shown that control still is not sufficient in some cases. Examples of such accidents within the chemical process and oil and gas industries are Flixborough Disaster, Bhopal Disaster, Piper Alpha Disaster, Phillips 66 Disaster, Sodegaura Refinery Disaster, DSM Chemical Plant Explosion, Stockline Plastics Factory Explosion and Texas City Refinery Explosion. Investigations of the accidents have uncovered a variety of causes and in recent years focus have tended to switch more and more towards organizational and management issues. However, in this paper, we want to focus on how maintenance has influenced some of these major accidents. Safety barriers are installed to control the risk but this may fail due to barrier vulnerability and/or deficiencies imposed by maintenance itself or due to postponement of maintenance. Maintenance activities in themselves may also trigger events which may develop into major accidents. Maintenance may therefore influence accidents in many ways. The main objective of the paper is to discuss how maintenance has influenced some major accidents in the oil and gas and chemical process industry. The paper builds primarily on a thorough literature review, including review of earlier literature on this topic and review of investigation reports from a selection of accidents.