Occupational hazards at the Irkutsk region oil and gas production facilities

Abstract

The oil and gas industry belongs to the high risk activity. Today, the enterprises engaged in this field including oil and gas production facilities implement a risk-based approach, which involves the identification of risk criteria and risk categories, timely reassessment of risks based on updated and formed normative legal documents. In this regard, the purpose of this research is the analysis of the management system of occupational hazards and measures to minimize them using innovations and innovative solutions at the oil and gas production facilities in the Irkutsk region of the Russian Federation. The object of the study is working conditions and occupational hazards at the oil and gas production facilities of two leading oil companies of the Irkutsk region: they are the Irkutsk branch of Gazprom Bureniye LLC and the Irkutsk branch of RN-Bureniye LLC. As a result possible reasons for the discrepancy between the physical factors of the working environment of oil industry workers when pеrforming works on oil rigs are analyzed. Professional risks having been assessed, a register of high-risk professions and hazardous areas of technological processes under the operation of oil and gas drilling rigs has been compiled. The professions studied in this paper are classified as high-risk and medium-risk ones. It is found out that the negative effects of moving machines and mechanisms, general vibration, local vibration, noise, low air temperatures in winter are unacceptable. To minimize unacceptable risks, it is proposed to introduce a low-cost technology for visualizing hazardous areas on a drilling rig with the installation of proven innovative safety barriers in addition to the related training of employees.