Petrochem/Utilities Industry Trends

Ensuring Offshore Safety

Issue Table of Contents

Ensuring Offshore Safety Focusing on Offshore Standards: Q&A with Bruce Reynolds Operating in Sensitive Offshore Environments Deepwater Exploration & Safety Standards and Related Publications

As upstream energy companies look to deep and ultra-deep waters for new sources of oil and natural gas, there is a continuing focus on operational safety. Reliable equipment, consistent safety procedures, and comprehensive health and environmental safety programs all help ensure the safety of companies’ exploration and production operations. Over the years, this diligence has paid off, as numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Minerals Management Service show: the injury and illness rate for offshore workers is nearly one-third of that of the rest of the U.S. private sector workforce.

The environment is also a benefactor of the industry’s focus on safety and reliable equipment. According to a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, only three percent of petroleum in North America’s ocean waters is the result of oil exploration and extraction; in comparison, nearly 85 percent comes from land-based runoff and pollution from human activities.

These types of statistics are the result of years of intense work by individual companies and the industry as a whole. As one of the most heavily regulated activities in the U.S., offshore exploration and production depends on the development of industry standards to maintain its safety records. Organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute (API) help guide this effort, by bringing together petroleum companies from around the world to develop standards for equipment and procedures used by the industry.

“You have the benefit as you develop standards of having many companies and manufacturers come together to share all of their independent knowledge in a collaborative setting to develop a standard that is most suitable for the industry,” says Bruce Reynolds, chairman of API’s Executive Committee on Standardization of Oilfield Equipment and Materials. “And that collective learning is always much more powerful than what any one company might know on its own.”

The result of these efforts is standards that have been embraced both by companies in the industry and government regulators. Suppliers depend on the standards to build safe and reliable equipment for deepwater exploration and production, upstream energy companies follow the standards in order to maintain a safe operating environment, and the government uses them to develop industry regulations.

“API has been writing standards for 75 years, and has a long reputation with the government regulators here and the regulators highly reference these standards. In fact, 130 standards are currently referenced as a part of our federal register in our US laws,” says Bruce. API’s focus now, he says, is on working with the Minerals Management Service to develop new guidelines for deepwater operations.

API’s newest standard for ensuring the safety of offshore operations is Recommended Practice 70, Security for Offshore Oil and Natural Gas Operations. Developed with assistance from the U.S. Coast Guard, the Minerals Management Service, API’s Offshore Operators Committee, and API’s Gulf Safety Committee, the recommended practice is designed to help offshore oil and natural gas drilling and producing operators and contractors in assessing security needs during the performance of oil and natural gas operations. It includes information on security awareness, conducting security vulnerability assessments when warranted, and developing security plans for offshore facilities.