Additional Company Information
Alison-Madueke Launches Offshore Safety Permit
22nd August, 2011
The Honourable Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke recently at the nation's capital, Abuja formally launched the Nigerian Petroleum Industry Offshore Safety Permit, which is a programme designed to enhance personnel accountability in swamp and offshore locations in line with the requirements of applicable legislations. The Honourable Minister who was represented by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Engr. Musa Goni Sheikh, recalled her directive as contained in her address during the last Health, Safety and Environment Conference, in which she had expressed grave concern at our lack of central data showing the number of personnel working at offshore locations.
At that forum, the Honourable Minister indicated her approval for the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, through the DPR to establish modalities for the setting up of the Offshore Safety Permit. She reiterated the Federal Government’s resolve to ensure that the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry is provided with enforceable regulations, guidelines and standards among others for the primary objective of ensuring its sustainability. Our primary focus should be the safety and wellbeing of our workers, without which we would be unable to sustain our business, Mrs. Alison-Madueke averred.
During his welcome address, the Director of Petroleum Resources, Mr. Wada Andrew Obaje, emphasized the importance of safety in our industry and proceeded to thank the Honourable Minister for this initiative which the Director assured is calculated to guard against the loss of lives through effective training and also, to ensure compliance with the provisions of the Nigerian petroleum regulations, international standards and best practices to achieve the vision of zero offshore incidents.
Mr. Obaje stated further that all personnel going offshore will undergo mandatory offshore safety training that comply with international standards, while maximizing the use of available Nigerian training facilities. To this end, four centers have been certified to international standards and are able to serve the region. These centers commenced training since 2007.
The Director assured that this project derived its legitimacy from the provisions of Section 44 of the Petroleum (Drilling & Production) Regulations of 1969, and the Mineral Oils (Safety) Regulations of 1997. This he maintained confers on operators the burden of ensuring that all offshore and deep offshore staff must obtain an offshore Safety Permit based on the Department’s guidelines, a key prerequisite being appropriate offshore safety training. He further stated that Government is not unmindful of existing challenges at this initial stage, such as resource availability and training facilities, which is why DPR has placed a 5-year moratorium on the process to enable all companies, comply with the guidelines.
To standardize the process, the Department has categorized offshore personnel as follows; Category A: Divers and underwater workers; Category B: Permanent offshore workers (those working offshore for more than 3 months); Category C: Temporary offshore workers (those working offshore for less than 3 months); Category D: Visitors offshore (Senior Government Officials, Senior Company Managers). All personnel in categories A-C shall undergo specific training, while those under category ‘D’ will only be subjected to an induction as they spend less than 48 hours offshore per year.
The Nigeria Offshore Safety Permit Program has certain expectations, among which are; real time verification of the identity of all persons embarking on air and maritime transportation to offshore platforms and locations; real time verification of the medical and safety training records of all staff going offshore and the provision of verifiable information of the location of personnel working offshore for emergency planning purposes etc.
The Nigerian Offshore Safety Permit is deployed as a stand-alone solution for personnel accountability in the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry hosted in the National Data Repository (NDR) within the DPR.
