OREANDA-NEWS. January 24, 2014. Speakers and delegates of the 2nd Operational Safety Challenges Forum for the Oil & Gas Industry focused their discussions today on the strategies and initiatives to effectively promote a safety culture in the operations of companies.

Organized by the Best Practice Technical Committee (BPTC) of Qatar Petroleum’s Dukhan Operations, the 2nd Operational Safety Challenges Forum is being held under the patronage of H.E. Dr. Mohammed bin Saleh Al-Sada, Minister of Energy and Industry and Chairman of QP, who delivered a speech at the opening of the forum last Tuesday.

In his opening address, H.E. Dr. Al-Sada highlighted the various safety records recently achieved by Qatar’s oil and gas industry. These included the 77 million man-hours without lost time incident (LTI) recorded by the Pearl GTL Project in August 2010, the 15 million man-hours without LTI registered by the Jetty Boil-off Gas Recovery Project of Qatargas in June 2013, the 17 million man-hours without LTI for QP’s Gas Sweetening Facilities Project, and the historic 100 million man-hours without LTI achieved recently by the Barzan Gas Project of RasGas.

“Each of these safety records is characterized by an unwavering commitment to safety excellence. And while safety remains an important challenge to the oil and gas industry, I believe that the real challenge for us is to sustain this record, and to elevate our achievements to new heights,” H.E. Dr. Al-Sada stressed.

It is in line with this that the presentations on the second day of the forum all discussed the importance of continuously promoting a safety culture among all oil and gas companies. The speakers came from QP’s Dukhan Operations, Offshore Operations, Industrial Cities Directorate, Gas Operations and Drilling Department as well as from Total E&P Qatar, ExxonMobil, Qatar Shell, Qatargas, Occidental Petroleum and Qatar Chemical Company Ltd. (Q-Chem).

A common theme among the presentations was the need to continuously promote a safety culture since companies keep hiring new staff and continue to expand their facilities. The discussions also focused on the key role of management in making their employees understand the importance of having a safety culture.