ENHANCING SAFETY IN GHANAS UPSTREAM PETROLEUM INDUSTRY. Raymond Obutey Odue.

Ghanas Offshore Petroleum Industry is a very important, viable economic tool to Ghana. Apart from its financial injections, other indirect advantages are being experienced. These include job creation, improvements in local product marketing (due to local content regulations) and advantages of energy being produced right in Ghana. The Industry started full oil production in December 2010, with about U.S $1.5 billion expected to be raised from the field. Current production methods involves the usage of 17 wells which are connected through a network of valves and pipelines to a Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSO Kwame Nkrumah) permanently moored at the north of the Jubilee field. The industrys main hub is now at the Jubilee Fields, but exploration and other drilling activated are already being carried out on other offshore sites.

Various safety issues on offshore platforms can be categorized into three groupings:

 Human Health and Safety  Maritime and Installations Safety  Environmental Safety. These three categories are normally intertwined with each other. Take the case of the well blowout that occurred on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico; Human safety was compromised, with 11 people reported dead/missing. The platform sunk

within days, and huge amounts of oil were spilled into the marine environment. The safety issues likely to pose problems to the industry in Ghana include fire situations, explosions, aftermath of well blowouts, sinking and collision with vessels. These safetythreatening situations hardly arose in isolations. For instances, in cases where well blowouts occurred, 58% of affected platforms suffered from fire outbreaks (Table 4.3). In Ghana, the GMA and EPA are the institutions heavily involved in the regulation of safety of the Industry. The GMA has a mandate to ensure maritime safety, and is the main body that implements IMO regulations to which Ghana is a signatory. It is to this effect that the GMA carries out fire plan vetting (in line with MODU Code, FSS Code), Damage Control plan inspection ( in line with MODU Code, SOLAS 73, ISM Code), implementation of safe distances for FPSO Kwame Nkrumah ( SOLAS 73, MODU Code), documentation procedures (UNCLOS) and environmental protection rules (MARPOL). The research identified the Shipping Act, 2003 as the law with which the GMA currently operates. With regards to the EPA, its role is mainly with environmental protection. The laws of Ghana require an EIA being conducted before permits are given for oil and gas activities to be carried out (Environmental Assessment Regulations, 1999). In implementing this law, the EPA has a document, Guidelines for Environmental Assessment and Management in the Offshore Oil and Gas Development. By inferring from its own mandate, the EPA has issued these guidelines as to what is expected of operators with regards to safety in the industry.

Regulations are meant to be met by the operators of the offshore platforms. An interview session with Tullow Ghana took place to ascertain safety arrangements form the stance of an operator. From Tullows point of view, they have met all the requirements put in place by local legislation and regulations, as well as follow international standards such as those of the OGP and ISO 40001 Standardization. They also corroborated the view of the research that the laws put in place in Ghana were weak and scanty to effectively address safety concerns. The research also made some headway into finding out that despite some tough regulations put in place globally, offshore platforms are still subject to cases of safety breaches. The answer to this is mainly poor maintenance culture, effects of natural calamities and pure negligence. Some might argue that no problems have yet arisen in Ghana, so we are all good. However, West Africa has been noted to have the loosest grip on safety regulations in the industry. Ghana however has to be seen as a beacon of hope in this regard. Despite the young age of the industry in Ghana and its relative newness, some measures have been put in place to ensure that safety is upheld. Commendable though, the arrangements can be tremendously improved with some bits of tweaking and capacity building of state agencies involved.

Problems which are hampering the effective regulation of the industry in Ghana are:

 Lack of proper legislation which fully cover safety requirements in the Industry. The current legislation, Ghana Shipping Act and the Environmental Safety Assessment act and the draft Marine Pollution Bill do not deal with issued of occupational safety on the offshore platforms.  Lack of clarity on which organization is purposefully in charge of ensuring safety on offshore platforms. The GMA, EPA, etc have different mandates which do not directly address health and safety concerning oil and gas activities.  Logistical constraints facing the current organizations supervising safety on the installations.  Lack of proper preparedness to deal with potential problems such as fire outbreaks, massive collision cases and oil spills. Though there are some documented procedures to be followed in the event of any safety lapse, we lack the requisite equipment and infrastructure to deal with such situations.

 Weak sanctioning mechanisms to deal with offending operators. Legislation:

The success cases of the likes of Norway and the UK (ie post Piper Alpha disaster) is due to stringent laws put in place. Strong hard laws are needed to effectively monitor safety practices on offshore platforms. The current guidelines used by the EPA, for instance, are soft laws. To enhance safety, there is a need to create legislation, which would create a regulatory regime conducive to the highest safety of operations. These

would help to entrench the countrys position on safety issues. A draft Offshore Health and Safety Bill should be prepared and it must do the following:

 Encourage safety culture  Make provisions for empowerment of state agencies to effectively supervise safety on the platforms

 Specifically spell out the duties of operators in making their oil rigs safe.  Also, the legislation must emphatically spell out specifications on all relevant safety issues in the industry, taking into account industry specifications as well as the peculiarities which may apply to Ghana as a country.  Such a law should spell out sanctions which would befall operators who do not comply with national safety standards.

 Set regulations on pipeline specifications, constructions and maintenance. Surveys and Inspections: With the putting in place of relevant legislation, there is the need for regular means of ascertaining whether the standards put in place are being used or not. This can be done throuth the carrying out of regular inspections, surveys and safety audits on the offshore platforms. These activities must be carried out in a time frame realistic enough to

enable the operator comply with inspectors recommendations and ensure that all aspects of safety issues are effectively covered. Surveys and inspections would help serve the following purpose:
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 It would be in compliance with existing international law concerning Port States (as in UNCLOS 73).  Ascertain whether actual compliance of the set regulations is taking place in the industry.  It would provide firsthand knowledge to policing agencies about the actual state of safety on oil rigs.  This would enable the State to keep an eye on maintenance being regularly carried out on the platforms, as well as issues of negligence of operators.  It would help in developing a proper database on the safety standards actually existing in the industry. Such a data base would be beneficial to law making, as well as being a research tool for the future. Inspections must be carried out to effectively group activities on the platforms into those which may be risk enhancers or risk reducers. This would be helpful in providing proper policing on safety of the industry. Such surveys and inspections can also be carried out by private entities such as the accredited Ghana Maritime Surveyors Association.

Addressing the Issue of duplication of roles played by State Agencies:

With special regards to the GMA and EPA, there is the issue of overlap of functions, as lack of proper clarity on who does what leads to a situation where duplication of roles
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come in. For instance, offshore oil spill management is supposedly catered for by both organizations. This may lead to a dual-system of authorization which hampers safety arrangements being top-notch. This problem is further complicated by the formation of the Petroleum Commission with the mandate to ensure that there is safety on oil rigs. This complication can be reduced in two ways; review their mandates to reduce duplication and specifically empower the organizations to take care of specific issues. The other recommendation is to authorize the Petroleum Commission to oversee the duties of the other state agencies. These agencies should have coordination offices which regularly monitor and coordinate their activities with the Petroleum Commission.

Empowering the State Agencies: Dealing with international, multimillion industries in such high risk environments is very tricky. Ghana as a country needs to improve control by the public authorities to effectively monitoring the state of safety in the industry. Empowerment can take place as follows:  Development of the human resources working in the agencies. Higher levels of on the job and off the job training to keep inspectors abreast with current developments in the industry.  Provisions of logistics to the state agencies to enable them properly operate. This can be done in the supply of equipment, working materials and capital investment into the activities of these agencies.

 Legally equip the appropriate state agencies with sanctioning powers to enable them combat breaches of safety by operators.

Training and Qualification requirements: The country must put in place standards regarding the qualifications and certificates required to be able to work on an offshore platform. Currently, operators have a free reign in deciding who to pick, and what qualifications to look out for. In as much as they have the right to choose their own workforce, these workers must have undergone some mandatory training in safety on offshore installations. It is recommended that a well structured training regime be established, as well as encouraging operators to regularly update their personnel on company safety procedure. Such training should be in line with the standards put in place by the country. In the interim, courses such as the IMO Mandatory Courses, BOSIET and TBOSIET (accredited by OPITO) can be made compulsory certification for those working in the industry.