Sam Fletcher
OGJ Online
HOUSTON, Jan. 17 -- The National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA) is trying to put together a team of industry experts as "the first baby step" toward some sort of consensus on safety standards for oil field service contractors, a staff member said Thursday.
That action follows a meeting of NOIA members Tuesday in Houston that was "intended only as a staging ground for industry-wide discussion and debate," said Thomas J. Michels, NOIA's director of public affairs. Despite a brief period in which to organize that meeting and little advance advertisement, about 70 people attended, including "operators and contractors of all (corporate) shapes and sizes," Michels told OGJ Online.
Most of the attendees are involved in health, environment, and safety operations of their companies, he said.
"The seeds for this discussion were planted at our fall meeting in Colorado Springs, Colo., with a presentation on the confusion and discrepancy among all of the safety standards that operators impose on contractors," he said. "The differences are so strong that some contractors say they practically have to retrain their crews to the new standards when they move from one client to another."
He said, "One concern that was frequently mentioned by contractors Tuesday as sort of a hypothetical situation is what to do with new employees when operators stipulate as a bid requirement that all of contract employees at the job site must have a specified number of years experience."
NOIA got involved when a member asked the association to investigate whether a consensus is possible on baseline skills and safety standards for contract workers that would satisfy operators as a whole.
However, NOIA officials apparently are uncomfortable in that role. "We want to serve our members, but we're not like the American Petroleum Institute with a big technical staff," Michels said
Although NOIA's membership embraces a wider spectrum of the oilfield industry, from equipment manufacturers to the service contractors and operators, he said, "The International Association of Drilling Contractors, API, and other trade organizations are better equipped to handle this."
Several trade organizations and their member companies have worked or are now working to develop their own safety standards. "Some think that their own safety standards gives them a competitive advantage," said Michels.
"We don't want to reinvent the wheel in this effort," he said. "But we would like to develop a smaller working group who can look at all of these best efforts and also see if there are any gaps in those standards that need to be filled."
NOIA "might try to do one more meeting with more senior executives from the industry," Michels said. "We want the industry to lead the regulators on this issue, rather than be forced to conform later with some prescriptive government solution."
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