A Two-Dimensional Risk Assessment Method for Oil and Gas Pipelines Based on “Accident Probability–Reputation Loss”

Oil and gas pipeline accidents not only caused personnel casualties, economic losses and environmental pollution but also brought great panic to the public. To provide accurate accident prevention strategies, risk assessment (RA) has been widely used in the oil and gas pipeline industry. It aims to quantify the potential risk due to unexpected eventualities. However, the current RA methods mainly pay attention to the tangible risk (such as the human safety risk, economic risk and environmental risk), and the intangible risk (such as reputation loss risk) is often neglected. This cannot reflect the real risk for the oil and gas pipeline. To settle existing research limitation, a two-dimensional risk assessment method for oil and gas pipelines based on “accident probability–reputation loss” is proposed. The method mainly involves four steps, namely, risk identification, probability calculation, consequence assessment and risk assessment. The proposed method is used to quantitatively assess a natural gas pipeline in central China. Its results indicate that pipeline risk is unacceptable due to the unacceptability of accident probability and various dimensions of risk. Therefore, this study can enrich and develop the current oil and gas pipeline RA method to reflect the real risk of oil and gas pipeline accidents.