  In the petroleum industry, Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) has been one of
the main tools for risk management. To date, QRA has mostly focused on
technical barriers, despite many accidents having human failure as a primary
cause or a contributing factor. Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) allows for the
assessment of the human contribution to risk to be assessed both qualitatively
and quantitatively. Most credible and highly advanced HRA methods have largely
been developed and applied in support of nuclear power plants control room
operations and in context of probabilistic risk analysis. Moreover, many of the
HRA methods have issues that have led to inconsistencies, insufficient
traceability and reproducibility in both the qualitative and quantitative
phases. Given the need to assess human error in the context of the oil
industry, it is necessary to evaluate available HRA methodologies and assess
its applicability to petroleum operations. Furthermore, it is fundamental to
assess these methods against good practices of HRA and the requirements for
advanced HRA methods. The present paper accomplishes this by analyzing seven
HRA methods. The evaluation of the methods was performed in three stages. The
first stage consisted of an evaluation of the degree of adaptability of the
method for the Oil and Gas industry. In the second stage the methods were
evaluated against desirable items in an HRA method. The higher-ranked methods
were evaluated, in the third stage, against requirements for advanced HRA
methods. In addition to the methods' evaluation, this paper presents an
overview of state-of-the-art discussions on HRA, led by the Nuclear industry
community. It remarks that these discussions must be seriously considered in
defining a technical roadmap to a credible HRA method for the Oil and Gas
industry.
