|
9 April 2005 - First International
Regulators Forum for Offshore Global Standards
Navigation
An International Regulators Forum (IRF) was held in London,
bringing together offshore industry representatives and regulators from around
the World, with the aim of showing their commitment to producing much needed
global consistency in common standards for health and safety.
Countries participating in the Forum included the following:
-
Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
-
U.S. Department of the Interior.
-
Norwegian Minister of Labour and Social Affairs.
-
Executive Director Exploration and Production Royal Dutch/Shell
Group.
-
BP Exploration & Production CEO.
-
Many European Officials from the Americas and Australasia.
The focus of the conference was on identification of offshore
safety improvements, international safety and regulatory issues and practical
steps required to produce common standards.
The IRF members made the following commitments:
-
Building a global network of regulators and industry bodies
dedicated to the common cause of raising health, safety and environmental
standards offshore.
-
Delivering, within a year, real examples of common, global
standards of practical value to the industry worldwide, in areas such as lifting
and performance measurement.
-
Building on these achievements in the longer term by identifying
- and delivering - other products essential to supporting this global
partnership.
Mr. Taf Powell, HSE's Head of Offshore Division and Chair of the
IRF Steering Committee said:
"This conference exceeded expectations, both in terms of
attendance and outcomes. Work has begun to address joint approaches to safety
problems, align safety and business drivers, understand the differences in
regulatory regimes and standards and the impact this has on global businesses.
"Most of all, however, the conference has demonstrated that
best sustainable economic performance of the upstream oil and gas industry is
inseparable from first class safety performance."
The focus of the conference was specific to the following:
-
The benefits of a strong health and safety culture.
-
How collaboration can work in practice and achieve improvements
in safety and operational efficiency.
-
Identification of common safety issues.
-
Sharing performance information.
-
Building a community of global regulators to work together and
support each other on common issues.
Mr. Powell also commented on the HSE's work programmes and
priorities and said:
"We have set ourselves some hard targets in terms of incident
reduction and dealing with issues such as degradation of older installations,
maintenance, monitoring and supervision and quality of risk assessment. This is
a fast moving industry and the issues are globalised.
"A wider network of regulators will help us to gain the
information and knowledge that we need to prevent incidents and secure the
industry's long term future."
Article by Alexandra Johnston
|
