Proactive oilfield safety: taking a zero-tolerance stand to risk.

• Author: White, Rindi
• Position: OIL & GAS

Alaska is home to some of the most dangerous jobs in America. Commercial fishing, a fast-moving construction industry, and natural resource extraction are among the most dangerous jobs in the nation, according to the federal Bureau of Labor and Statistics' census of fatal occupational injuries.

According to information from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, more than 450,000 people across the nation worked in oil and gas extraction and support services in 2011. Between 2003 and 2010, 823 of those workers were killed on the job; a rate that OSHA says is seven times greater than the rate for all US industries.

For that reason, safety is perhaps more important to oilfield companies than it has ever been. Across the board, oilfield companies and oilfield service companies are taking a zero-tolerance stand to risk in the workplace, implementing new and more effective safety strategies.

"It doesn't matter the producer, every producer is demanding safe operations. And if you can't provide them, you're not going to be there long," says Peak Oilfield Services President Mike O'Connor. "Our workforce kind of knows and understands that, it's a requirement of the job."

At ConocoPhillips, the state's largest oil producer, a recently implemented safety program decreased workplace incidents by 60 percent in 2012, according to company officials, but the company isn't resting on its laurels.

"Culture change is a journey," writes spokeswoman Natalie Lowman by email. "We strive to be a learning organization and seek continuous improvement, and as such encourage the reporting of both actual incidents and near misses. We investigate the cause of every incident and implement corrective actions to address the root cause in order to prevent recurrence."

BP, whose fields account for more than two-thirds of Alaska's oil production, has safety as its core focus as well. The company uses a behavior-based safety process, or BBS, through which workers observe and identify safety-related behaviors that are critical to performance.

"BBS builds a strong safety culture through communication, networking, and developing empowerment opportunities for employee involvement at all levels of the organization," says BP Alaska spokeswoman Dawn Patience.

The process has been in place longer than two decades and has lowered recordable injuries on the job throughout that time, but 2011 and 2012 were the best years during that period, Patience says.

Establishing...