Oil and Gas Industrial Safety - Multilateral International Cooperation.
Authors: Tarasenko Vitaly A. 
Published: October 2008

Introduction.

Worldwide integration, the forthcoming entry of Russia into the World Trade Organization (WTO), development and improvement of the Production Sharing Agreement legislation (PSA), the energy dialogue "Russia - USA", "Russia - Western Europe- not only give evidence of the objective coincidence of interests in the energy sphere, but assume the further expansion of oil and gas business cooperation.

This means, on the one side, further liberalization of the world labor market, access and participation of foreign specialists in oil and gas projects implementation, increase in oil and gas equipment importation, more intense transfer of advanced technology and technical services.

On the other side, industrial safety requirements for the competence of oil and gas personnel are becoming more rigorous worldwide. And the technical and technological progress in particular that one dealing with oil and gas offshore shelf and deep water development, is steadily enhancing this trend.

It is known that improvement in personnel competence and qualification is one of the key components of an efficient industrial safety system in oil and gas industry.

In Russia the basic normative legal act for industrial safety is the Federal Law "Industrial Safety of Hazardous Production Facilities". This law's requirements have been developed and detailed by the "Safety Regulations for Oil and Gas Industry". The realization of the appropriate normative regulation, and also special permission, control and supervision functions in the field of industrial safety is assigned to the Federal Mining and Industrial Supervision of Russia (the Gosgortekhnadzor of Russia), being a federal executive authority.

The Tyumen Department (I am honored to be at the head of) is a territorial agency of the Federal Mining and Industrial Supervision of Russia. The Department is operational in the territory of the Tyumen Oblast, Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Western Siberia where approximately 90 % of gas and 60 % of crude oil are produced in Russia.

One of the functions carried out by the territorial agency is to control the training of personnel working at hazardous production facilities.

Thus, the problem I would like to dwell on, is within my professional interests.

Main Body - Problem.

Under the "Safety Regulations for Oil and Gas Industry" currently in force: "Persons who have special education and have passed examination in the field of industrial safety, can be authorized to supervise over the works on drilling, maintenance and repairs of wells, in-well geophysical works, as well as on production and preparation of oil and gas. This provision should be applicable to foreign specialists as well". *1.

"Only drillers and specialists who have passed the course

"Control of wells. Monitoring of wells with gas, oil and water shows" in the specialized training centers and holding the corresponding licenses can be admitted to works at the wells with probable gas, oil and water shows. Attestation and retraining of such specialists should be done at least once in three years.