In 2004/02/18, the honorable oil minister agreed with the establishment of Health, Safety & Environment (HSE) management system in the petroleum industry. It was supposed to put a model, after reviewing available resources in this case, as a guide for setting up this management system in the central council program for supervising security and firefighting.
Meanwhile, the relevant studies and the best item choose to establish secure, effective and efficient management system had been started since three years before.
After the council approval, the specialized committee for security and firefighting was constituted to study the documents extensively and onsider precisely the international oil companies’ experiences in the HSE management system establishment.
The results of the different models consideration and related studies by this committee lead to select the International Association of oil & Gas producers’ model as the most proper approach. This subject was approved in the 37th meeting of the central council for supervising security and firefighting.
In 2003/03/15, this subject was imparted by minister’s mail to the entire levels of petroleum industry to perform necessities for health, safety & environment management system. Reviewing resources, manpower, organizational structure, and required facilities was scheduled respectively. The first HSE organizational chart was imparted by National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) in the early of 2004. In 2004/07/27, the ministry of petroleum imparted the HSE organizational chart to the entire petroleum industry levels, ministry of petroleum, major oil, gas, petrochemical, refining & distribution companies and their sub companies, separately.
Since then, all oil companies have moved along the defined purposes and approaches and make great efforts to perform their activities and duties based on the executive procedures and instructions, which have been provided in the planning stage in accordance with the HSE principles.
The duties description, positions eligibility requirements, and relevant work force admission began simultaneously with the impartment of HSE structure. The whole activities last more than a year. The lacks of prior background about related specialties, particularly in case of HSE integrated management, encountered the establishment of management system with challenges and decrease the program advancement, especially to control the incidents such as decease, occupational diseases, and environmental pollution. This issue obligated the necessity to accelerate the planning, execute training courses and increase HSE personnel skills in the early stages.
The change in traditional viewpoint to control the incidents and make preventative schemes in all plans and schedules formed those cultural programs, which were founded in the early years despite being time-consuming program, without static situation at any time, and desired results would appear through programs productivity and HSE management system consequences. The produced results should be improved continuously.
Preparing instructions and required specialized executive procedures, updating the rules, instructions and current standards were of programs, which should have been planned and executed desirably. Obtaining the current situation in case of HSE management, bench marking, gap analysis, and road map preparation are of other cases that should be planned and built up in the shortest time.
Now, after passing more than 4 years from those impartment, the petroleum ministry tries to describe the HSE duties for all positions and find ways to engage all levels of petroleum industry.
Recognizing critical activities, representing the level of engagement to prevent incidents for all units in companies, and organizing activities with regard to the HSE engagement in other organizations are of those difficult programs in front of the HSE management.
If these programs are executed effectively, it can be claimed that we had succeeded in preventing and controlling incidents.