OREANDA-NEWS. October 11, 2011. Karachaganak Petroleum Company Operating B.V. (KPO) has announced the successful completion of the re-certification audit of company’s Occupational Health and Safety Management System and Environmental Management System against the international standards OHSAS 18001 and ISO 14001, reported the press-centre of KPO.

KPO General Director, Giuseppe Pasi, said: “As a world class operation, KPO is committed to the highest standards of occupational health, safety and environmental performance. Having maintained the certificate of conformity to the OHSAS 18001 and ISO 14001 standards is a major recognition of our efforts directed at continuous improvement of our performance in this area.

“We all can be proud of this achievement and our common aspiration is to continuously enhance the effectiveness of our HSE management system preventing everyone who works on behalf of KPO from any harm”, added Giuseppe PASI.

OHSAS 18001:2007 is an international occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system standard that has helped KPO to establish a management system aimed at minimising potential risk associated with company’s activities to employees and contractors as well as to gain internationally accredited assurance in the field of occupational health and safety.

The ISO 14001:2004 environmental management system standard has helped KPO minimise a potential negative impact on the environment and comply with all applicable laws and regulations.  This ISO standard specifies requirements for establishing an environmental policy, determining significant environmental aspects and impacts of activities, planning environmental objectives and measurable targets, implementation and operation of programmes to ensure continual improvement implementing preventive and corrective actions, and periodic management review.

Over the last decade KPO has been pursuing unprecedented steps aimed at improving safety conditions at Karachaganak. All KPO employees and contractors are required to follow safety rules at all times and strive for an incident-free operation.  KPO is focused on minimising environmental impacts through the use of best available techniques and the adoption of international good oil field practice.  Enhancing hydrocarbon utilisation, efficient use of water resources, the reduction of Greenhouse Gas emissions and hazardous waste and eliminating spills and leaks are all key elements of Karachaganak’s environmental management programme.

When benchmarked against its industry peers, Karachaganak now clearly rates within the top quartile with respect to gas utilisation.  Overall gas utilisation in the first half of 2011 reached 99.96%.  This level of gas utilisation is unprecedented in oil and gas operations anywhere in the world.