OGA Review Highlights Room for Improvement

The UK Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) has published a new thematic review which highlights that there is room for improvement.

The OGA said the review recognises that industry is improving following earlier interventions but stresses the importance of maintaining the high standards now achieved by the majority, and the need for a minority to catch up.

In particular, the review notes that there remains room for improvement around managing production, flare and vent consents and the timeliness of license extension requests, the OGA highlighted.

“While we are pleased with the response to our earlier interventions, this must be maintained and a minority still have improvements to make,” Tom Wheeler, the OGA’s director of regulation, said in an organisation statement.

“In future, industry should expect us to be proactive in taking enforcement action. However, we are here to help and that is why we are pledging to improve the quality and accessibility of the guidance we produce and look forward to working with colleagues from industry on setting up a training academy and creating new systems, particularly for meeting the challenges posed by the energy transition,” Mr Wheeler added.

Commenting on the review, the operations director for industry body Oil & Gas UK (OGUK), Katy Heidenreich, said, “thematic reviews are an established method of performance improvement which has been used across a number of sectors and we welcome this constructive reflection from the OGA”.

“It not only highlights areas where the UK offshore oil and gas industry and the regulator can

make improvements, but also where the sector can build upon good practice,” the OGUK representative added.

“There is always more which can be done and the recommendations provide practical and considered suggestions for both industry and the OGA to continue to improve and we look forward to building on this constructive approach,” Ms Heidenreich continued.

The review looked at six areas of interaction between licensees and the OGA and examined the reasons why some licensees were “tripping up”, while others were doing a “good job”.

The six areas investigated were; licence mechanics, flaring, venting and production consents, pipeline works authorizations, wells consents, data requirements, and statutory notification of meetings.

The OGA’s latest review included workshops with OGA staff, key stakeholders, regulators in the UK and abroad and considered the results of an anonymous survey of the people responsible for the work.

This is said to have highlighted the need for improved training and better preparation for job handovers and led to the OGA making a series of recommendations that it expects industry to follow. These can be seen below:

• set up coordinators for each area covered by the review

• set up generic email addresses for coordinators

• set up quarterly knowledge-sharing meetings for coordinators

• address potential single points of failure by ensuring that knowledge/roles are shared

• work with the OGA on development of an online training academy

• consider new systems, including for new energy transition-generated requirements

Source: Rigzone