OGP Land-Transportation Safety Recommended Practices Reduced Fatalities Significantly
Authors: Bybee Karen 
Published: February 2015

This article, written by Assistant Technology Editor Karen Bybee, contains highlights of paper SPE 126520, ’How OGP Land Transportation Safety Recommended Practices Led One Company To Significantly Reduce Fatalities in Just 18 Months,’ by David Allison and Mihai Frasineanu, OMV-Petrom, originally prepared for the 2010 SPE International Conference on Health, Safety, and En vironment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production, Rio de Janeiro, 12-14 April. The paper has not been peer reviewed.

The full-length paper demonstrates that the application of the elements of the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP) Land-Transportation Safety Recommended Practices was instrumental in reducing traffic-related fatalities to zero over an 18-month period. The full-length paper describes the gradual step-by-step development of a company land-transportation standard and the key elements applied so far, and it shares the learning’s of the company in Romania. 

Introduction

Driving-related incidents are the largest single cause of fatalities in OGP member-company operations, accounting for approximately 25% of the fatalities worldwide for the past 10 years. Between 1998 and 2008, OGP member companies reported 313 fatalities among employees and contractors engaged in work-related driving activities.

An OGP task force produced “Report Number 365, Land Transportation Safety Recommended Practice” with the stated purpose of helping reduce the number of, and eventually eliminating, serious road-traffic accidents and fatalities by providing guidance on how to implement land-transport safety elements into a structured management system. The document was published in April 2005.

An exploration and production company in Romania, with a fleet of more than 3,000 vehicles, had traditionally recorded automobile-accident fatality rates far in excess of peer companies within the oil and gas domain. The internal statistics were in line with the average Romanian road-traffic fatality rate, which in 2006, was 32% above the European Union average rate and increasing.

In an effort to reverse this alarming situation, the company put considerable additional resources into the implementation of the OGP Land-Transportation Safety Recommended Practices in 2008, with the objective of reducing (and eventually eliminating) the high number of serious road-traffic-related incidents being suffered by its workforce, involved contractors, and the general public.

The company started applying the OGP recommended practices by the introduction of a company standard, “Health, Safety, Environment, and Quality Requirements for Transportation Activities”, which was based on the recommendations contained in the OGP document. From a level of almost zero compliance in 2007, the company moved rapidly forward and as a result encountered many challenges that had to be understood, defined, and managed in a dynamic way. As the elements of the recommendations were implemented and momentum against the initial reluctance of the organization grew, many lessons were learned that potentially will assist other organizations considering the adoption of the OGP approach to avoid similar problems.