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Petrotrin
hosted an international Environmental Health and Safety meeting of the
CASYSIA/ ARPEL group on October 20-22 2009, at the Petrotrin
Pointe-a-Pierre Club. ARPEL, which is a Spanish acronym, stands for
Regional Association of Oil and Natural Gas Companies in Latin America
and it is an organisation with member companies in over 26 Latin
American countries. Its main focus is to improve the Region’s Oil and
Gas industry.
Petrotrin
has been a member company of ARPEL for over a decade.
More than
60 participants attended this year’s meeting, representing energy
companies from several Latin American and Caribbean countries, including
Trinidad and Tobago.
The Theme
of this year’s workshop was “Leadership and Behaviour as the
Cornerstones to Accomplish Environmental Health and Safety Excellence”.
The aim of
the workshop was to:
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Promote discussion and reflection on the organisational and human
aspects which would enable companies to continuously improve their
EHS performance.
-
Focus on leadership and manpower commitment which are the key
ingredients necessary to accomplish levels of EHS excellence.
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Assist in raising the bar of EHS management performance and
improving the ARPEL reference management system, SIGAS&SI (which is
a Spanish acronym for ‘Integrated System for EHS Management’.)
The days’
activities involved a combination of plenary presentations and breakout
groups which promoted discussions among the various companies as they
shared practical experiences about the human and organisational aspects
of EHS management.
Three
central themes emerged during the workshops:
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The role of Leadership in fostering and maintaining an enabling EHS
culture throughout the organisation
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The part played by organisational culture itself in facilitating and
encouraging a safe environment
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The role of the individual in EHS
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The impact of human factors such as levels of training, worker
empowerment, human error and individual choices on EHS statistics
was explored at length.
There was
unanimous agreement among the Companies represented that improvement of
EHS within any organisation involves more than updating technology and
processes. It involves, above all, strengthening the human systems.
Effective leadership and appropriate behaviour throughout the
organisation remain the cornerstones to EHS excellence. |
