The National Iranian Oil Company's Health, Safety and Environment Department has outlined measures implemented in the past 12 months as well as its future plans.
“Devising and implementing HSE requirements, undertaking the Pre-Startup Safety Review, expanding NIOC subsidiaries’ HSE structure, scrutinizing incidents and requiring companies to implement reform plans to prevent incidents are some of the measures taken by the HSE department last year,” Mani Abdollahzadeh-Rad, the head of the department, was quoted as saying by Shana. The official added that the department has established a workgroup for promoting the culture of safety and evaluating HSE performance in the same period.
According to Abdollahzadeh-Rad, some of NIOC's HSE directives are being implemented at a slow pace by the subsidiary companies due to the complicated requirements. “However, we hope the hurdles would be soon removed by the firms’ managers, which will reduce incidents in the oil industry,” he said. Following an explosion in well No. 147 of Rag Sefid Oilfield in Khuzestan on Oct. 29, 2017, two workers were killed. The blaze at the oil well was extinguished 58 days later, in what was described as the most formidable fire in the country's petroleum industry.
Oil well fires can cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil per day. Combined with the ecological problems caused by the large amounts of smoke and unburned petroleum falling back to earth, oil well fires can also cause enormous economic losses. Officials had said the well was not operational. Iran's petroleum industry was shocked by another deadly incident in October. At least six people were killed and two injured in a blaze at Tehran Oil Refinery following a fuel leakage at a processing unit of the refinery.
The official noted that revision of NIOC’s safety regulations, checking the status of workforce, equipment and machinery of fire stations, assessing the performance of HSE department with the Process Safety Management approach, purchasing 64 firefighting vehicles and assessing fire risk at North Azadegan Oilfield in Khuzestan Province are the main plans of the HSE department. Abdollahzadeh-Rad stressed that the state-owned company has taken several measures in the past four years to reduce the flaring of associated petroleum gas in the oil and gas fields, stressing that new units are required to implement zero flaring plan in their design.
