US oil and gas regulators for years have used prescriptive methods to determine the frequency of equipment inspections. Such prescriptive safety programmes focus on understanding the ramifications of equipment failure.
Other oil and gas regulators have embraced a risk-based approach, which focuses on the probability of failure of a certain piece of equipment.
The different approaches make sense given the traditional mix of operators working in US waters, says Lars Herbst, Gulf of Mexico region director at the US Bureau of Safety & Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).
"Other countries are generally not as prescriptive in their approval analysis or verification, but the drawback from that is that much of the verification is left to the operators, which can cause problems," Herbst says.
