Unit 7 Maintaining Operational Safety in Oil and Gas Industry Text 1. Operational Safety

Operational safety of oil producing or refining companies in oil and gas industry in­cludes environmental, industrial and occupational safety.

Environmental safety includes subsurface protection targeted to prevent oil and gas losses and formation damage and environment protection targeted to prevent contamination of air, lands, forests, waters, damage to plants, animals and people.

Major environmental contaminants during implementation of oil production processes include oil and oil products, sulfurous gases and hydrogen sulfide, mineralized formation wa­ters and drilling wastewaters, oil sludge and chemicals applied for intensification of well drill­ing, production and oil, gas and water treatment processes.

Level of environmental contamination with industrial wastes is assessed by the number of times maximum permissible concentrations of contaminants released into the environment are exceeded.

Occupational safety includes personal safety of employees; application of personal pro­tective equipment; implementation of mandatory pre-employment and regular medical examinations of employees; investigation of work related injuries and occupational diseases and so on.

Incidents involving equipment are called accidents, and incidents involving people are called injuries. By level of severity incidents are classified as near-misses, highly potential incidents, major incidents, and emergency situations.

Near-miss is an event, which under slightly different circumstances could have resulted in an incident. Highly potential incident is an incident, which under slightly different circumstances could have resulted in a major incident. Major incident is an incident, which resulted or could have resulted in a significant acci­dent involving equipment, fire, explosion, multiple injuries or fatalities of people.

Emergency is a natural or man-caused situation, which spreads beyond limits of a major incident, and resulted in a major fire, explosion, fatalities of people, including natural disas­ters.

Emergency response requires involvement of emergency rescue teams and external ca­pabilities. Injuries by the number of involved in them people are classified as multiple injuries and individual injuries. By their severity injuries are divided into microtraumas including, for example, bruises and cuts, light injuries, serious injuries and fatalities.

All incidents, accidents and injuries are subject to investigation. Incident investigation is performed in order to identify both immediate causes and system or root causes of the inci­dent, undertake corrective actions in order to prevent the incident recurrence in the future and learn lessons from it.

Word Combinations

оccupational safety – охрана труда

subsurface protection – охрана недр

major environmental contaminants – основные загрязнители окружающей среды

sulfurous gases and hydrogen sulfide – сероводород

formation waters and drilling wastewa­ters – пластовые воды и сточные воды бурения

oil sludge and chemicals – нефтешламы и химические реагенты

near-misses – предпосылки к происше­ствиям

major incidents – крупные происшествия

man-caused situation – ситуация техногенного характера

multiple injuries – групповые несчастные случаи

emergency response – ликвидация чрезвычайной ситуации

to be subject to investigation – подлежать расследованию

to prevent the incident recurrence – не допустить повторения происшествия

risk assessment – оценка рисков

identification of risks and hazards –определение рисков и источников опасности

risk mitigation measures – меры по снижению рисков