(68a) Using Quantitative Risk Assessment to Make Billion Dollar Decisions

This paper will outline the approach Chevron has taken to recent major capital projects using Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) to drive project teams to develop inherently safer plant designs.  It will demonstrate how Chevron is using QRA to protect its employees, contractors and the public and to support our vision to be the global energy company most admired for its people, partnership and performance.

Although QRA has been used extensively in some regions of the world due to regulatory drivers, its use outside of these regions has been limited.  This paper will discuss some recent examples of capital projects within Chevron, and how we have used QRA to drive site selection, modify process design and identify appropriate equipment spacing.  Each of these decisions can have enormous cost implications, so decision quality is vital.  The use of quantitative techniques provides project teams with the evidence required to make defensible, unbiased decisions.

The nature of early project design does not lend itself well to traditional QRA techniques which is time consuming and unable to respond to the rapid evolution of alternative concepts.  Therefore, the paper will also introduce the concepts behind the tools and techniques developed by Chevron that are required to support early project design and concept evaluation.