Technology Focus: Health, Safety, Environment, and Social Responsibility (August 2012)
Authors: Garland Emmanuel 
Published: February 2015

Technology Focus

Safety, environment, health, security, and social responsibility are all interlinked. It is particularly visible whenever a major accident occurs (for example, when a leak caused by a spiteful attack or wrong decisions made by exhausted, stressed, or unskilled people leads to polluting an area with consequences on the local population). To prevent these events, we need sound design of our installations, skilled and healthy teams, good planning of interventions, and so forth. It is clearly not only the responsibility of health, safety, and environment (HSE) or health, safety, security, environment, and social responsibility (HSSE & SR) teams, but of all workers. It is the responsibility of each of us to strive to reduce the frequency of incidents or near misses and the size of chronic discharges to the air or to the natural environment that may affect the health of the workers or of the communities in the long term, and to ensure that those whose natural resources are produced benefit from it.

Those who believe that it is enough to follow the rules set by the lawmakers are wrong. While compliance is useful to prevent many incidents, we all know the limits of its efficiency; regulations have never been able, and will never be able, to prevent all accidents and all incidents, particularly when it comes to producing hydrocarbons in emerging frontiers (e.g., Arctic, tight gas, extra-heavy oil, high pressure/high temperature, ultradeep waters). We have to invent new ways of addressing stakeholder concerns and develop the technology that adequately controls and limits the effect of exploration and production on ecosystems, a large concept that encompasses natural environment as well as interactions between our activities and the people. We also need to develop the means by which production of natural resources benefits not only those who have access to it (end users maybe thousands of kilometers from the source) but also the local community.

We need better technology and processes. We need to develop chemicals of which the unavoidable discharge has no effect on the environment or on the health of the workers, techniques of geoseismic that limit the level of noise emitted, detection devices that prevent leaks, design of installations that leads to safe high-integrity protection systems, drilling practices that help predict and manage undesirable kicks, improved CO2-capture techniques, and more. We also need efficient auditing systems, sound management systems, comprehensive stakeholder dialogue tools, and tools to develop not only a safety culture but an HSSE & SR culture shared by all workers.

The following pages provide a glimpse of what some people and some companies have achieved recently. Will we be wise enough to learn from these experiences and bold enough to develop those tools and processes that our stakeholders—and our children—dream of?

Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.

SPE 151819 Water Conservation: Reducing Freshwater Consumption by Using Produced Water for Base Fluid in Hydraulic Fracturing—Case Histories in Argentina by J. Bonapace, Halliburton, et al.

OTC 22705 Lessons Learned From Statfjord A Oil Spill and Actions Taken To Reduce Spill Risk During Offloading Operation by Trond Stokka Meling, Statoil, et al.

SPE 152435 Communicating HSE to a New Generation by Juan Carlos Lopez, Schlumberger

OTC 22339 Costing the Earth—Oil-Spill Response and Ecosystem Services by Nigel H. Wright, Atkins

SPE 143713 Identifying Environmental Risk of Sustained Casing Pressure by K. Kinik, Louisiana State University, et al.

SPE 153867 An Environmental Solution To Help Reduce Freshwater Demands and Minimize Chemical Use by Jason E. Bryant, Halliburton, et al.

SPE 154812 An Audit of Cardiovascular Disease Detected During Mandatory Extension Medical Assessment for Employees Reaching Retirement Age by A. Akhter, Qatar Petroleum, et al.