Case Study: Promoting an Effective HSE Culture in a Young Joint Venture with a Massive Operation to Rejuvenate a Mature Field

Abstract

Abstract Discovered in 1932, the Bahrain field is one of the oldest oil fields in the Middle East. In 2009, a new Joint Venture company comprised of international oil companies was created, Tatweer Petroleum, with the objective to rejuvenate the mature Bahrain field reservoirs. Tatweer Petroleum immediately embarked on a massive field-wide development plan managed by an army of 800 employees and more than 5,000 contractors. The vigorous operation involved parallel execution of major infrastructure projects to accommodate new production from 650 new wells (drilled in 4 years) that included debottlenecking of existing facilities, a new power distribution system, tank batteries, well manifolds, gas compression, gas dehydration, water treatment plants, and steam generation plants, as well as several environmental, health and safety improvement projects. The magnitude and pace of the redevelopment activities posed a continuous challenge on the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) team who had to ensure compliance with local and international HSE standards and meet tight company KPIs and HSE targets. Leveraging valuable, rich experience and safety cultures of its international partners, Tatweer Petroleum effectively launched several HSE initiatives that significantly improved the HSE performance of the operations. This paper presents how Tatweer Petroleum managed to achieve high HSE standards through the implementation of a series of aggressive campaigns and programs side-by-side with the massive operation citing three examples of these HSE initiatives.