Status of Industrial, Fire and Occupational Safety

For the purpose of improving the working conditions and occupational safety, 1,956 actions were performed in 2003 at the OJSC AK Transneft Group enterprises (108.5% compared to the 2002 level), including the following:

• Improvement of working conditions for 13,784 employees;

• Certification of 7,848 work places in respect of the working conditions

• Medical examinations of 32,599 employees

• Procurement of the full required amount of protective/clothing, safety shoes and other IPE;

• Preventive vaccination of 22,510 people.

Industrial safety declarations have been developed for all production facilities of the oil trunk pipelines, that have been subject to expert analysis, identified and registered in the State Register of Hazardous Production Facilities.

Skill upgrading and training were provided to 10,932 workers, technical and engineering personnel at the training courses addressing the industrial and occupational safety issues.

The scheduled package of technical activities has been completed under the Program of Improvement of the Reliability of the Facilities Fire Protection Systems.

A comprehensive modernization was performed for 16 automatic fire extinguishing systems of tanks farms and oil pumping stations, 88 tanks were equipped with the outer and inner piping of the subsurface injection fire extinguishing system. At the facilities of Central Operations Service Complex of the oil trunk pipelines there were produced 598 high-pressure generators of low-expansion foam, 198 smoke-resistant generators of high-expansion foam, 56 measuring and batching tanks, 1,125 tons of “Multipena” foaming agent for the facilities involved in the comprehensive modernization of the automatic fire-extinguishing systems. Fire trucks in the amount of 39 units have been procured for the fire-fighting divisions.

Reading for Purpose

Read the following interview of Oil and Gas Journal correspondent and Mikhail Ionov, Chief Engineer of RITEK Company to be able to answer the questions.

1. What kind of company is RITEK?

2. Where does RITEK operate?

3. What do ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 standards deal with?

4. Why does RITEK want to be certified according to international standards?

Certification, the Western Way

RITEK Implements International ISO & OHSAS Standards

Russian oil companies set out to become certified in accordance with ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 standards. What is the certification for, what benefits does it bring to business entities and the whole society? On these issues talks Mikhail lonov, Executive Deputy General Director and Chief Engineer of Russian Innovation Fuel and Energy Company - RITEK Open Joint Stock Company - which was one of the first to have decided to go for certification.

Oil & Gas Journal: RITEK has been active in the Russian market for the last 12 years. How did the company's policy in environment protection and industrial safety change during that period?

Mikhail lonov: Geographically, the areas of activity of our company are very specific: you will find among them such regions as some parts of the Republic ofTatarstan which are very rich in agricultural and water resources, or a complex ecosystem of the Far North in the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district, or difficult for development expanses of the Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous district covered with taiga forests and bogs. All that means is that we have to be extremely careful about environment protection issues and industrial safety. We are also involved in such projects as oil export by the Northern Rout which requires Ugh professional skills of the personnel and equally carefully handling ecological aspects.

Being aware of the importance of these problems, RITEK for no less than twelve years has been conducting a systematic and goal-orientated work on streamlining and improving our activities focused on environmental protection and industrial safety. By now, we have managed to set up a quite clear and efficient system.

Within the structure of our company, now we have a specialized department for dealing with environmental protection and industrial safety issues. In 2002, RITEK took some obligations which were formulated in the company’s policy on safety, health and environmental protection. The financial aspects were settled accordingly: in the company’s business plan there is a special expenditure line to that end. Each year we would see improvement of the main parameters. Today we feel confident enough and started the process of certification based on the following two international standards: ISO 14001 which deals with the ecology management system and OHSAS 18001 which is about the system of industrial safety management.

OGJ: RITEK is one of the first Russian companies to be certified according to international standards. Why did RITEK decide to apply for international certificates?

Ionov: Indeed, as of today we are the second company behind LUKOIL among Russia's oil and gas producers to have been certified as per both standards. As a matter of fact, RITEK is the 20th Russian company certified by ISO 14001 and the eighth certified by OHSAS 18001.

As for the question why we decided to go through the process of certification, one should mention three things.

First, it is worth remembering that RITEK is a daughter company of the largest Russian oil production company - LUKOIL - and which declared international standards certification its priority. Hence the certification of our company looks quite logical.

Second, RITEK is an innovative company which for the last few years has been taking new technologies to international markets - to mention such countries as Oman, India, or Venezuela. Actually, for the first time the issue about certification came up when we started to cooperate with PDO Company in Oman. The absence of international certificates caused some problems: no wonder, international certificates guarantee that a company working overseas will adhere to according rules, will not be in breach of environmental and industrial safety requirements and will work without breakdowns and negative impacts on environment.

Thirdly, and finally, the certification procedure made it possible to solve some problems inside the company. It is not enough just to get certificates: the system should be continuously maintained and improved and that sets clear goals for the policy development in the area of environmental protection and industrial safety both for a short and long term prospect.