Offshore industry’s Continuous imrpovement journey is about working together
Offshore industry’s Continuous impRovement journey is about working together
Started in 2020,
Collaborating for Safety and Environmental Sustainability is a plan focused on action to achieve goals.
Safety and sustainability: two sides of the same coin.
Started in 2020,
Collaborating for Safety and Environmental Sustainability is a plan focused on action to achieve goals.
Safety and sustainability: two sides of the same coin.
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Collaborating for Safety and Environmental Sustainability, the continuous improvement initiative in Newfoundland and Labrador’s (NL) offshore petroleum industry, is unique for two reasons. First, it’s a co-operative effort across all offshore operators, working toward a common goal. Second, performance improvements are real and ongoing, thanks to a comprehensive plan that’s practical, pragmatic and based on needs identified by operators, workers, contractors and suppliers.
“The plan is founded on an industry-wide vision: Atlantic Canada strives to be the safest and most environmentally sustainable offshore producing jurisdiction in the world.”
While individual operators have always pursued excellence in environment, health and safety performance, working together is an opportunity to enhance information sharing and collaboration across the entire industry.
A PRACTICAL PLAN
The initiative started in early 2020 when offshore operators including Cenovus, ExxonMobil, Hibernia Management and Development Company Ltd., Suncor, Equinor, bp and Chevron embarked on their collective improvement journey. The catalyst was a common goal to raise the bar on environment, health and safety performance. With help from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), participants kicked off three years of collective work to keep taking positive steps in the journey.
In 2022, offshore operators came together again to re-validate the initiative’s vision and purpose, and to outline new objectives to guide the initiative in 2023 and beyond, setting the stage for the next phase of collaboration and performance improvement.
SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS
Achievements to date include:
- Held several events to advance information sharing including:
- Offshore Environmental Forums with regulators, governments, Indigenous groups, the fishing industry and others.
- Six workshops with the contractor community on specific safety topics.
- An oil spill communications tabletop exercise with the fishing industry. Learnings were used to enhance communications tools and methods.
- Surveyed offshore workers to better understand safety culture perceptions, resulting in a plan to implement recommendations.
- Developed an online portal for operators and contractors to encourage sharing offshore safety-related information, including eight ‘safety moment’ videos to provide easy to access content for sharing by operators and contractors.
- Published seven Industry Best Practices relevant to the plan and adopted by regulators as Codes of Practice.
- Conducted a Spill Response Capability Assessment of the NL Offshore area.
Looking AHEAD
Collaborating for Safety and Environmental Sustainability is a living document that will continue to be reviewed and revised. Over the next two years, the offshore industry intends to continue working together as part of this initiative to:
- Develop common approaches to manage risk and share information.
- Enhance collective understanding of future workforce recruitment and retention challenges.
- Mitigate potential impacts of offshore exploration and production activity through communication with other ocean users and enhanced spill preparedness.
- Support collaboration and education related to emissions reduction, and support government initiatives to achieve net-zero emission goals.
