There has been an important controversy over whether the series of major accidents at Chinese Bohai Bay in 2011, i.e. the Penglai 19-3 and Suizhong 36-1 oil spills, are a sign of systematic safety problems in the Chinese offshore petroleum industry or a casual result of fortuities. It is hard to obtain the answer unless the national risk level of the offshore petroleum industry is monitored and measured. This paper describes an effort to propose and discuss an analytical approach for the development of major hazard risk indicators that can be used for monitoring, measuring and predicting national risk levels in the offshore petroleum industry. This study focuses on major hazards on offshore installations, hence personal safety hazards that affect individuals are not covered. Firstly, a risk-based approach for developing major hazard risk indicators on offshore installations is developed. Both leading and lagging major hazard risk indicators on offshore installations are suggested. After that, the proposed analytical approach is tested by the risk assessment results of the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) in the latest ten years (2007-2017). This is followed by a discussion on suitability and challenges of the proposed risk-based approach. It has been demonstrated that the results of this study can provide a realistic and jointly agreed major hazard risk picture in the offshore petroleum industry. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Institution of Chemical Engineers.