Effective Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) requires both a qualitative analysis of potential human errors and a quantitative assessment of the likelihood of those errors. One of the main conclusions from an International HRA Empirical Study is the importance of qualitative analysis when performing HRA. Although qualitative data collection is relatively well established for HRA in the nuclear in...

The US shale exploration and production (E&P) industry has grown since 2007 due to the development of new techniques such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. As a result, the share of shale gas in the US natural gas production is almost 50%, and the share of tight oil in the US crude oil production is almost 52%. Even though oil and gas prices decreased sharply in 2014, the product...

This paper presents empirical evidence which indicates that the introduction of petroleum based products on the American markets was a significant factor in reducing the demand for whale oil. As a result, the whaling industry, America’s 5th largest industry at the time, soon collapsed. A counterfactual study is then presented which suggests that if the introduction of petroleum based products h...

The Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the largest oil spill in the US history and the death of 11 men, has been thoroughly investigated to avoid a similar catastrophe in the future. In this paper we make a review of the accident including a brief overview of the causes, discuss the relevance of the accident for the Norwegian Petroleum Industry and describe how the Nor...