Improving Safety and Health In the Exploration and Production Process --- A Long-Term Perspective

Good morning. It is an honor and a privilege to be one of the keynote speakers at this very important conference on health, safety and the environment in oil and gas exploration and production. This is a vital industry throughout the world, and protecting the safety and health of those who work in it, as well as the environment surrounding oil and gas well operations must be a major concern of everyone.

Today I will attempt to explain to you what the United States Government is doing to help further the goals of this conference, particularly in occupational safety and health because that is my field of expertise.

I am the Director of Compliance Programs for the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration. My Agency, OSHA, has the responsibility for regulating safety and health in the workplaces and worksites of the United States.

We fulfill this responsibility by issuing standards or regulations, enforcing those standards and regulations, providing consultation services to employers, training employers and workers, and sponsoring some research activities.

We conduct our activities in occupational safety and health in a partnership that includes labor representatives; business groups, the States and territories (25 of which operate their own Federally-approved occupational safety and health programs); other agencies of the Federal Government; safety and health professionals; and academic institutions.

Relying entirely on Government activity to ensure compliance with safety and health standards in millions of workplaces in the U.S. would be an impossible task. We simply do not have the resources to inspect all these workplaces on a regular basis.

So we emphasize that the responsibility for assuring safe and healthful conditions in the U.S. workplace or worksite is that of the employer and that the workers should assist and be involved in identifying and correcting any hazardous conditions.

The Government provides an oversight function, with only the necessary amount of regulation and inspections and as much information, consultation and assistance as possible.

We think that this approach works best in our society and that U.S. employers now understand the economic reality that a safe and healthful workplace is more efficient and that "Safety Pays" through increased productivity and improved worker morale and reduced operating costs due to injuries and illnesses, including workers' compensation premiums.

To assist employers in developing effective safety and health programs, we provide training, consultation and written guidelines that they can follow. For example, we developed voluntary guidelines for the management of safety and health programs and guidelines for worker safety and health training which all employers can utilize to improve injury and illness prevention in their workplaces.

The voluntary guidelines are a distillation of safety and health management practices already in use by some employers in successful programs. They are endorsed by safety and health professionals, corporations, associations and labor representatives who responded to OSHA's requests for information, comments and assistance while the guidelines were under development.

The key elements in these guidelines are four fold: first, management commitment and worker involvement in developing an effective safety and health program; second, worksite analysis to identify not only existing hazards but changing conditions which might create new hazards; third, hazard prevention and control; and last, but not least, safety and health training.

OSHA has found a strong correlation between the application of sound management practices in the operation of safety and health programs and a low incidence of on-the-job injuries and illnesses. Because of this, the Agency has increased its emphasis on management practices in several of its programs.

We also developed programs which recognize worksites with exemplary safety and health management programs.

This is called our Voluntary Protection Program. Approximately 100 such worksites have qualified for this special recognition, including, I'm very happy to say, a number in the petrochemical industry.

This year we are observing the 20th anniversary of the establishment of OSHA in the U.S. OSHA has made considerable progress in improving workplace health and safety and awareness of the issue during its first 20 years.

A survey of safety and health professionals published last Fall showed that more than half of those surveyed think OSHA is doing a better job than it was 10 years ago.

And a New York management research firm surveyed employees on necessary goals for corporate performance. The No. 1 goal these workers cited as necessary was safe working conditions.

This was mentioned more often than such goals as good benefits and good pay.

OSHA is continuing to work on new regulations necessary to preserve the health and safety of workers. In the past three years we have published 12 new final rules and proposed 17 other new standards, providing added protection for millions of U.S workers.

Right now OSHA is giving an extremely high priority to petrochemical safety. We have proposed a standard covering process safety management of highly hazardous chemicals.

That regulation will better protect workers against the consequences of chemical accidents involving such hazardous substances. As many of you are well aware, there have been some disastrous incidents at petrochemical and chemical facilities in recent years, involving much loss of life, many worker injuries, and substantial property damage.

Our proposed process safety management rule, which was published in July, 1990, would provide protection for workers primarily in manufacturing industries such as chemicals and allied products and petroleum refining and related industries.

We plan to issue this regulation in early 1992.

We also plan to hold an international conference on worksite safety and health in the petrochemical industry in the summer of 1992. This petrochemical conference, which will be similar to this international conference on health, safety and the environment in oil and gas exploration and production, will include international participation from governments, management, and labor. We think it will serve as an excellent forum for developing a consensus strategy on improving workplace safety and health in the petrochemical industry world-wide---much as the organizers of this conference hope that it will assist in developing global strategies for improving safety, health and the environment in oil and gas exploration and production.

OSHA does not have a specific standard relating to oil and gas well drilling and production, but it does enforce its General Industry standards in that industry in the U.S.

We do so because we are aware that the oil and gas well drilling and servicing industry ranks among the more hazardous industries in the U.S. The relative magnitude of the safety risk for the industry is illustrated by the fact that U-S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 1989 indicated that there were 12.1 injuries per 100 full-time employees in this industry compared with a rate of 8.6 in the private sector as a whole. In 1989, this industry experienced 185 lost workdays per 100 workers versus 79 for the private sector as a whole---almost double the private sector rate.

One study by the Texas Employers Insurance Association of accident costs has said that the costs of accidents in oil and gas well servicing ranked fourth in severity among the 52 major types of industrial operations in Texas.

Because the U.S. is so geographically diverse, the hazards in the industry can vary from area to area. For example, the hazards of drilling in a formation where hydrogen sulfide is present may be different from drilling in another part of the country where it is not.

The hazards of working in daylight can be different from those encountered while working at night. For example, the risk of fires caused by night-time drill stem testing is much greater than when the tests are performed during the day without electrical light.

And the hazards can vary from job to job. Accidents that happen to a derrickman many feet above the drill floor are different from those of floorhands who break and make pipe connections.

As I said earlier, OSHA has no specific standard for oil and gas well drilling safety. But the Agency does enforce its General Industry standards in the industry and, where it lacks a standard governing a hazard, it utilizes Section 5 (a) (1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which requires every employer to keep a workplace or worksite free from recognized hazards that are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.

Because of the high injury rates in oil and gas field services, OSHA has conducted a number of local special emphasis inspections in the oil and gas industry in those regions where drilling and production activities are most often encountered.

For example, the Agency has had a local emphasis enforcement program under way on off-shore oil drilling platforms in Alaska. During the past six years, we have conducted 64 inspections of these platforms, which are outside the jurisdiction of the State of Alaska's state-operated occupational safety and health program.

In those inspections we found a total of 133 violations, of which 56 were classified as serious.

OSHA's Area Office in Corpus Christi, Texas, has been conducting a local emphasis enforcement program in oil and gas well drilling and field services in the Corpus Christi area. In requesting permission to conduct this enforcement program, the office noted that there had been continuing occurrences of fatal accidents and a high rate of job-related injuries in the industry.

During the fiscal year which just ended, the Corpus Christi Area Office conducted 27 inspections in the industry. A majority of the violations were classed as serious. The inspections were mainly on rigs doing horizontal drilling in what we call the Austin Chalk area. Five fatalities had occurred on these rigs during the year. A number of the injuries resulted from lack of well control in the horizontal drilling process.

The Lubbock, Texas Area Office also conducted a local emphasis enforcement program in oil and gas well drilling and field services in its area, mostly in the Permian Basin of Texas. Twenty local emphasis inspections were conducted last year with more than 80 percent of the violations found classified as serious.

The Lubbock Office has reported that its program, which has been under way several years, has been very effective. There was a 40 percent reduction in fatal accidents during the fiscal year which just ended.

The most commonly-cited violations in these inspections were of OSHA standards requiring guarding of machines, abrasive wheel machinery, and mechanical power transmission apparatus; safety requirements for hand and portable power tools; fire prevention requirements; electrical safety requirements; requirements for guarding floor and wall openings; hazard communication; fall protection for workers, protective equipment for workers; and well control equipment.

Supplementing our enforcement efforts have been a number of consultation visits to oil and gas drilling and exploration sites which were requested by the employers involved. In those visits, consultants, who are funded largely by OSHA, examine a worksite for hazards and make recommendations for correcting those hazards.

In addition OSHA personnel have been actively conducting outreach activities in some of the areas where oil and gas production is concentrated, such as Texas. Personnel have given speeches and training sessions for oil company audiences, informing them, for example, of the need for hazard communication programs where there is hydrogen sulfide present in the well.

A number of states which operate their own OSHA-approved occupational safety and health programs also conduct inspections of oil and gas well drilling and production activities. During the last fiscal year, these states conducted 245 such inspections, with a total of 443 violations reported.

Five of the states, Alaska, California, Michigan, Utah and Wyoming, have separate standards for such activities.

I brought copies of the State standards with me, in case any of you are interested. I will provide them to the conference committee for inclusion in the Conference Proceedings.

In 1983, OSHA also conducted a study of more than 400 fatalities which had occurred in the U.S. oil/gas well drilling and servicing industry during the five-year period from 1977 through 1981.

We found that almost one-third (32 percent) of the fatalities in oil/gas well drilling had involved workers being struck by objects such as pipe, traveling blocks, tongs, or cables; another 23 percent of the drilling deaths involved workers falling from such things as work platforms; about 16 percent of the drilling fatalities involved workers being caught in, under or between objects on the rig during operations; 10 percent were workers killed in rig fires and/or explosions; eight percent were workers killed when rigs collapsed, and seven percent involved deaths from electrocutions.

The study revealed that over one-fifth of the fatalities in oil/gas well servicing resulted from workers being struck by objects; a fifth of such deaths were the result of rig fires and/or explosions; and about 14 percent of the oil well servicing deaths were the result of falls.

About half of the deaths in other related field services occurred when workers were caught between pieces of equipment being loaded or unloaded or between equipment and vehicles or were run over by vehicles. Another 20 percent of deaths in this field services category were the result of workers being struck by falling and rolling pipe during loading and unloading, falling pieces of equipment being hoisted on and off trailers, or being struck by snapping winch lines.

As a result of this study, we recommended that employers in the industry establish and enforce work procedures and practices to reduce or eliminate those accidents that were occurring regularly, such as workers being struck by rig components or equipment.

We also recommended that the employers establish and enforce such safety procedures as the use of fall protection equipment, and that they increase efforts to train and educate workers and supervisors in good safety and health procedures and practices.

I also brought with me a copy of that 1983 study, in case any of you want to look at it. Although technologies change in the industry our recent inspection activités have shown the same hazards to still exist.

Other agencies of the U.S. Federal Government are also involved in health and safety and environmental protection in oil and gas well drilling and production in the United States.

For example, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service in the U.S. Department of the Interior share jurisdiction on the Outer Continental Shelf. OSHA has an agreement with the Coast Guard on activities on the Outer Continental Shelf, designed to minimize duplication of activities.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also plays a role in helping to protect the environment in oil and gas well drilling and production operations.

OSHA has assisted these other Federal agencies at various times. For example, OSHA represents the Department of Labor on the National Response Team (NRT), a 15-member interagency group under the chairmanship of EPA and the Coast Guard. This team coordinates the U.S. Government's response to emergencies resulting from oil spills and other hazardous material releases.

Some members of the NRT---EPA, the Coast Guard, NOAA, the U.S. Public Health Service and OSHA---also have been assisting the clean up and rebuilding efforts in Kuwait and Saudia Arabia.

OSHA's role is to help as much as possible in protecting the safety and health of Americans employed by the Federal Government as well as those working for private companies in the Gulf.

During the years the United States also has gained in knowledge by steadily increasing contacts and cooperation with other industrialized nations which have workplace safety and health programs.

This conference is a good example of the type of international activities in occupational safety and health which are of particular benefit to us.

We believe that these international ties benefit not only workplace safety and health in other nations, but help us improve conditions in the U.S.

And we hope that this conference is but the forerunner of many meetings and conferences with those of you who are working on environmental and occupational safety and health issues in this industry.

Worker concern over the safety and health of their workplaces is intense today in nations around the world.

The potential for catastrophic accidents has been amply demonstrated by some recent disasters, particularly in petrochemical facilities.

In addition, much of the western world has enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity which has allowed workers and their families to focus more on improving the quality of their lives and their physical well-being. They are paying increased attention to being able to work free of occupational hazards.

I believe that people throughout the world are entering a similar era of prosperity and peace, that they are equally concerned about good occupational safety and health, and that we can assist each other in preventing future accidents.

We hope that some of the lessons in occupational safety and health that we have learned in the United States developing partnerships with labor, business and regional authorities, professional engineering organizations and other Government agencies with interests in the field; maximizing enforcement capabilities through the use of special emphasis programs and assisting employers in developing effective safety and health management programs---can be of use to those of you in other nations who are attempting to improve occupational safety and health in this industry.

We also look forward to learning from you as this conference progresses.

As I indicated at the beginning of my remarks, this industry, as we all know, is essential to the world economy. But we cannot let our need for oil and gas override the necessity of protecting the lives of the workers engaged in finding and producing that oil and gas. Nor can we allow the need for oil and gas to result in ruining the environment.

That is why this conference is so important. Thank you very much for this opportunity to participate in it.