Government and Industry Cooperating to Improve Offshore Environment
Authors: Wolting Bert 
Published: December 2007

North Sea governments and the oil industry have taken the innovative step of working together on minimizing the impact of their activities on the environment, recognizing the need for pan-European cooperation on environmental issues. The Chemical Hazard Assessment and Risk Management (CHARM) Model is a major step towards cooperation among various North Sea governments, operators, and oil services companies operating in the same area. Initiated in December 1992, CHARM is a mathematical computer model which evaluates the hazard levels of offshore E&P chemicals used in the North Sea area.

The environmental characteristics of a chemical product are evaluated and combined with the intended use of the product to establish its potential effects on a particular environmental area. CHARM operates sequentially in four modules: prescreening begins, followed by hazard assessment, risk analysis, risk management. Input and output of data are maintained in a database format. Since CHARM is used as a decision support tool, the user can define the criteria for the use of CHARM and the decisions made based on its results. Some operators have vested so much trust in the CHARM Model, that they use it as a decision making tool.

The pumping service companies in the North Sea are working together to offer information from actual operating experience. The result of this work for cementing is currently being discussed and incorporated in the model. Other groups of chemicals like stimulation, completion and workover are currently being documented. Moreover, the significance of industry and regulatory bodies working together to improve the environment is enormous.

Background

In March 1990, ministers at the Third International Conference on the Protection of the North Sea recognized the need "to develop and adopt a harmonized mandatory control system for the use and discharge of offshore E&P chemicals." The development of the system was assigned to the Oslo-Paris Commission (OSPARCOM), the European regulatory body in charge of North Sea environment.

OSPARCOM invited the members of the offshore industry to participate in the development of new regulations. The oil industry international offshore Exploration & Production (E&P) Forum, the European Oilfield Specialty Chemicals Association (EOSCA), and Dutch and Norwegian authorities employed consultants to develop a decision support model that evaluates the environmental risk for E&P chemicals. The model was named the Chemical Hazard Assessment and Risk Management (CHARM). The participants decided that CHARM must provide the following data:–a transparent and simple calculation of hazard and risk levels for the marine environment on the basis of chemical properties–programmable rules for data handling–default definitions–calculation principles

The CHARM project was initiated in December 1993. The development of CHARM was divided into three phases. During the first phase, consultants created a framework for Hazard Assessment, Risk Analysis and Risk Management. At the end of the first phase, the model could perform environmental evaluations of the use and discharge of production chemicals. The consultants released a temporary software version of the model.

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