Safety and environmental management will be a prominent theme at the largest decommissioning and abandonment gathering in the world in Houston, USA.
Among the speakers is Lewis Dennis, Chevron’s US Offshore Area Decommissioning Manager, who will present on fatality and major incident prevention, drawn from Chevron’s multi-year hurricane restoration campaign.
“We look at everything we do through the lens of how we can reduce the risk and eliminate injuries,” Mr Dennis said. “Our thinking is, engineer the risk out whenever you can. Don’t just give the worker a pair of gloves, work to engineer out the task that requires gloves.”
DecomWorld’s 6th Annual Decommissioning & Abandonment Summit in March will also feature a live panel debate on diving and underwater safety designed to help delegates identify and mitigate diving and underwater hazards.
Reviewing the issues around underwater burning, alternate cutting devices, site clearance techniques and more will be board members of the US GoM Diver Safety Work Group, and executives from Chevron and Aqueos Corporation.
Presentations will also explore how approaches from the salvage industry can be adapted to decommissioning in unexpected events and major incidents.
Process Safety Management (PSM) techniques and compliance with SEMS regulations are very hot topics in the GoM right now. Delegates will get a complete overview of PSM to understand how it can be applied to improve safety during decommissioning operations. Experts will be on hand to compare PSM with risk-based process safety requirements to assess how best practices can be implemented.
From the regulator’s viewpoint, Susan Green, deputy regional supervisor for field operations in the Gulf of Mexico for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), will deliver an update on BSEE’s vision and priorities.
“The pressure on operators to up their safety and environmental performance is higher than it has ever been in the Gulf of Mexico, so we’ve designed a full-spectrum program to help the industry take an effective, strategic view,” said DecomWorld project director Phil Chadney.
The 6th Annual Decommissioning & Abandonment Summit takes place 10-12 March, 2014 in Houston.
For more information, visit www.decomworld.com
