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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

New guidelines unveiled for incident reporting in Oman’s Oil & Gas sector

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Seeking to streamline and strengthen industry-wide reporting on occupational health, safety and environmental-related mishaps in the Oil & Gas sector, the Oman Society of Petroleum Services (OPAL) has rolled out new guidelines in this regard for mandatory implementation by operators and key players in this key economic sector.


The Incident Sharing Standard, which was first unveiled in August this year, seeks to streamline and harmonise procedures for reporting on around 17 different types of safety-related incidents occurring on the premises, or at the operations, of operators, according to a key HSE expert.


Sulaiman al Sulaimi, HSE Team Leader at Oman Oil Company for Exploration & Production (OOCEP) – the upstream arm of Oman Oil Company (OOC) — that the initiative was driven by a need to create common guidelines for collating data on mishaps occurring in the industry and to share this information in the hope it will help promote awareness and support preventative efforts as well.


“This Standard is one the major milestones achieved by the Oil & Gas sector this year,” said Al Sulaimi. “It has been endorsed by the top managements of at least 17 operators and approved by the Ministry of Oil & Gas as well. This is a demonstration of their commitment to this new Standard.”


Addressing industry executives on the concluding day of the OPAL Oil & Gas Conference 2018, the official said a special Incident Local Review Committee will be set up under OPAL’s auspices to review the data received on a monthly basis from the operators. This information will be fine-tuned and submitted to the Ministry of Oil & Gas, which has made incident-reporting mandatory under its revised Oil & Gas regulations due to come into


force soon.


Additionally, the Incident Local Review Committee will meet once every quarter to study trends in safety incidents and publish its findings on the website of OPAL.


According to the HSE executive, the objective behind the Incident Sharing Standard is knowledge sharing. “In the past, it was quite different for operators to share information on incidents, either for legal reasons, embarrassment, and so on. Sadly, as a result, the same incidents continued to recur.”


Al Sulaimi lamented the absence of a “robust database” on specific safety incidents occurring in the industry – a shortcoming that the new Standard will seek to address, he noted.


Significantly, the new guidelines for incident-reporting standardise hundreds of abbreviations and terms related to HSE, said Al Sulaimi. For example, traffic mishaps are referred to as ‘MVI’ (Motor Vehicle Incidents) and no longer as ‘RTA’ (Road Traffic Accidents).


Furthermore, at least 53 types of mishaps, hazards, incidents and occupational diseases have been clearly defined and incorporated in the Standard. Occupational health diseases, for example, have been suitably defined and classified. Other types of safety concerns that fall under the purview of the Standard include Lost Time Incidents (LTIs), process safety, environmental impacts, and some elements of security as well.


Yesterday’s deliberations also included presentations on newly implemented and soon-to-be-launched standards by OPAL in the following areas: Dropped Objects Prevention Scheme (DROPS), Illegal Drugs and Alcohol Abuse, and Road Safety Database Management.


Experts from PDO also shed light on ‘Human Factor Engineering (HFE)’ in the Oil & Gas sector centring on a socio-technical approach to systems design. HFE is described as a multidisciplinary approach to engineering that focuses on the integration of five key elements: People, Work, Work Organisation, Equipment and Environment.


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