scholarly journals The Alarm Bell is Sounding and the Regulator is at the Door: Emergency Response, Reporting, and Investigations in the Age of Heightened Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Sears ◽  
Marianne (Chuck) Davies ◽  
Conor Chell

In light of recent disasters in the oil and gas industry, there is increasing public pressure to develop more robust processes for responding to such disasters in Canada. In this article, the authors examine the emergency response procedures currently in place, and consider how oil and gas producers, carriers, and processors can improve these procedures. The article begins by outlining the emergency response planning and incident reporting obligations incumbent on the oil and gas industry, which is followed by an overview of the regulatory inspection powers that exist to investigate real and potential environmental, workplace, and safety incidents. Finally, the article considers what responding to an actual emergency would look like, and proposes best practices for the oil and gas industry.

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Polson

At the APPEA 2017 Conference in Perth, Bernadette Cullinane and Susan Gourvenec drew our attention to the looming challenge for Australia’s oil and gas industry in decommissioning its aging assets (Cullinane and Gourvenec 2017). While Cullinane and Gourvenec’s paper focussed on the experience challenge for the Australian industry, this paper will drill down to explore the funding and financial challenges and opportunities for decommissioning in the decades ahead. In approaching the decommissioning of their assets, oil and gas companies must consider a broad range of stakeholders, beyond their immediate shareholders and board members. As we have seen in the development of new projects, Australian Government, environmental organisations and community groups, all have increasingly significant impact. These stakeholders have been considered and managed with (at best) varying degrees of effectiveness in the recent past. This impact will continue to grow for decommissioning of existing assets. However, right now, with few decommissioning projects in play, the industry has a limited window of opportunity to set the agenda for how, when and under what kind of funding arrangements and financial structures decommissioning can take place. By getting ahead of the game and establishing best practices from the outset, the industry can demonstrate to Australian Government, environmental organisations and community groups a level of commitment and accountability that will allow us to move ahead on decommissioning, with reduced outside interference. The window of opportunity is closing. The time to act is now.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-21
Author(s):  
Alvaro Souza Junior

ABSTRACT In April 2002, the Brazilian National Environment Council (CONAMA) enacted Resolution 293, which defines the contents and requirements for oil spill response plans for ports, terminals, pipelines and oil platforms. CONAMA Resolution 293 was undoubtedly a landmark in the history of Brazilian planning and preparedness for oil spill accidents as long as it provided a technically consistent reference for elaboration of oil spill response plans based on the identification of spill sources, vulnerability analysis of potentially affected areas, and adequate response organization, procedures and resources. A clause of the Resolution required its review in 5 years after entering into force. To accomplish this requirement, the Ministry of Environment (MMA) opened a public hearing process to collect comments and suggestions for changes. One main contributor in this hearing process was the Brazilian Petroleum and Gas Institute (IBP), which represents the oil and gas industry. IBP created an internal workgroup which discussed proposals for changes in CONAMA Resolution 293 that were subsequently sent to MMA. After the public hearing process, MMA invited a number of institutions to join a workgroup to discuss the received comments and proposed changes. In general, these institutions were mostly the same which participated in the CONAMA Resolution 293 workgroup five years before: IBAMA (federal environmental agency), Maritime Authority, Ministry of Transportation, Ministry of Mines and Energy, AN? (oil & gas activities regulatory agency), IBP and some state environmental agencies. Proposed changes to CONAMA Resolution 293 were sent from the workgroup to one of the CONAMA technical chambers, which approved the proposal with minor amendments. The aim of this paper is to present and discuss the relevant changes in this regulation that will affect facility oil spill response plans in Brazil.


1975 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Henry R. White

Concern for the protection of the environment has resulted in the creation of number of new U.S. statutes and regulations which have an important impact on American oil and gas exploration and production operations. The author provides brief historical survey of some of the legislation which provided foundation for laws enacted within the past few years. He discusses in some detail the National Environmental Policy Act provisions and concludes that they have been construc tive force for change, both in the government and the oil and gas industry. The author then provides an overview of various statutes and. regulations establishing guidelines to ensure clean air and water, which are of particular importance to oil and gas producers. In conclusion, the author stresses the importance of maintaining balance between the need for healthy environment and the need for an adequate supply of energy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 137-146
Author(s):  
Andrey S. Bochkov ◽  
Mariia G. Dymochkina

Background. Decision-making process in the oil and gas industry, traditionally extremely expensive, should be based on the point of maximizing the business value. Forecasting the effectiveness of investments of any business unit in oil and gas should be based on a data-driven management approach. The purpose of this article — to study methods and best practices of applying a data — driven approach to decision-making and analyze the possibility of scaling methods of best practices in the processes in oil and gas company. Materials and methods. Research a various case with data-driven management shows that using data-driven approach allows solving several tasks at once: to make a fast and quality decisions based on data that can always be checked, and the result can be analyzed; to reduce the costs by eliminating inefficient steps and increase the flexibility of the process; to form the correct attitude to data (data culture) and prepare for the implementation of the technologies of Industry 4.0. Analyze cases revealed two common and important things: engineering of business processes from the key performance indicators and the technological development. Results. In article discusses the topic of applying a data-driven decision-making approach in oil and gas companies using several examples of Gazprom Neft. These examples shows that better effect from the using of data-driven management is achieved by consistently modeling business processes for achieving maximum values; highlighting and fixing key business performance indicators and creating a digital monitoring of these indicators, which allows you to the achievement of goals. Conclusions. In the conclusion of the article there are recommendation about using data-driven management approach for various processes of an oil and gas company.


2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 601
Author(s):  
Chris Hawkes

The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) is a global forum in which member companies identify and share best practices to achieve improvements in areas such as health, safety, the environment, security, social responsibility and operations. IOGP members collectively produce 40% of the world’s oil and gas. IOGP has been collecting annual safety data from its members since 1985: this database has grown to be the largest in the oil and gas industry, representing 2999 million workhours and operations in 104 countries in 2017. Having this large database of information and standardised reporting allows trending and analysis on a scale that is not possible for any individual member company. This is particularly true for deriving trends for fatal, and major process safety events that individual companies may only see infrequently. In the 5 years leading up to 2015 there were 85 fatalities reported by IOGP members per year on average, but none of these incidents were ‘new’ and we recognise the causes of most of them. Started in 2016, after 2 consecutive years of an increase in the fatal accident rate, IOGP’s Project Safira aims to provide clear solutions to prevent fatalities due to process safety events, aviation incidents and motor vehicle crashes. A fourth project area is industry wide implementation of a single, common, standardised set of ‘Life-Saving Rules’. We want to make sure that never again shall we read of a fatal incident and feel like we have seen it before. We also want to learn together, as the global industry that we are, and eliminate fatalities from occurring.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Vincent Bridle

Abstract In July 2021, commemorations will be held to mark the 33 years since the 1988 Piper Alpha tragedy in the UK sector of the North Sea where 167 oil field workers lost their lives. Without question, the incident was a watershed event for the international oil and gas industry not simply because of the immediate toll in human lives lost, but also in terms of the devasting aftermath endured by countless friends, families and loved ones whose lives were forever changed. The tragedy also served to illustrate just how poorly the oil and gas industry really understood and managed those operating risks that possessed the potential for catastrophic loss, both in terms of business cost and overall reputational impact. In the wake of the public enquiry that followed and chaired by Lord Cullen of Whitekirk, one of the principal recommendations required that the international oil and gas industry do a much better job in determining both its major hazards (i.e. major operating risks) and also in creating the necessary operating conditions to demonstrate that such things were being well managed. The objective being to provide tangible assurance that the likelihood of the industry ever incurring such a calamitous event again in the future had been reduced to as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP). In taking its responsibilities very seriously, the international oil and gas industry responded by raising the profile of the management of Health, Safety and the Environment (HSE) across the wide spectrum of its global operations. By the mid-nineties, the industry had implemented comprehensive and structured systems of work within the framework of purposely built HSE Management Systems using templates designed and developed for the industry via the International Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP)*.


2018 ◽  
Vol 785 ◽  
pp. 125-132
Author(s):  
Vadim Aleksandrov ◽  
Marsel Kadyrov ◽  
Andrey Ponomarev ◽  
Vadim Golozubenko ◽  
Vladimir Kopyrin

The development and use of the radial drilling technology has been a controversial issue in the oil and gas industry for a long time. Nowadays, almost all big oil and gas producers deal with the question of its practical use at particular fields. The results of works carried out at carbonate reservoir units of the Orenburg Region were analyzed in the article. The ways to improve the existing technology of radial drilling were also offered. The research objective is to evaluate the technological efficiency of radial drilling application at the fields of the Volga-Ural oil and gas region with carbonate reservoir units. The results of radial drilling were characterized with the help of the detailed geological and field analysis and their quantitative evaluation was given.


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