Integrated Method for Assessing Occupational Risks at Oil and Gas Production Facilities

Abstract

Today, the problem of ensuring safe working conditions in the workplace is relevant for any employer. At the moment, despite the introduction of advanced technologies and equipment at oil and gas production facilities, personnel are exposed to a set of adverse production factors having an industry-specific nature and features. These features influence the reliability of the results of the occupational risk assessment. The methods existing today do not fully reflect the whole picture of risk in the workplace, but give only their fragmented values. The aim of this work is to develop an integrated methodology for assessing occupational risks for oil and gas production companies. In this work, from the variety of methods, we selected four methods that together take into account a significant number of risk-generating aspects, namely: the method of assessing the individual occupational risk level, the Fine-Kinney method, the method of scoring occupational risks, and the method of sociological survey of workers. The study on the assessment of occupational risks using an integrated method was carried out at the facilities for the development of three fields - the Yarakta, Iktekh, and Markovo fields belonging to Irkutsk Oil Company LLC. According to the results of applying the integrated assessment of occupational risks, most positions had a “medium” risk level, but for occupations engaged in manual labor and having a lower degree of automation of labor a “high” risk level was established. For these workplaces, it is necessary first of all to implement measures to improve working conditions.