In West Texas, apparently OXY has cameras on location that are viewed by people in Houston. When they see anything unsafe, they can sound the alarm, from Houston, halt the job, and have a safety guy run through the job to ensure everything is being done in the safest manner possible. Then they resume the operation after an hour or two shut down.

I know Chevron requires lids on coffee cups and your computer locks you out periodically after you have been working 45 consecutive minutes or so. Keeping hands on the rails of stairs while using them is another I've seen enforced. I also think COP makes engineers fill out 5 cards every Friday for safety related events they witnessed or they stopped that week, or something along these lines.

This got me to thinking, what are some of your more strenuous oil and gas safety rules you've witnessed or seen implemented by oil and gas companies? And further, were there any interesting unintended consequences you noticed?

I had a PM order lunch for delivery one day. The driver called him on his way to get directions. When the driver arrived, the PM laid into him and called his supervisor to let him know that it is against company policy to talk on the phone while driving and that he would never order again.

Damn, that's crazy that OXY can do that. Have they always had that, or is that something new they've rolled out recently? I mainly worked on XTO jobs, so nothing too extreme.

To add:

I've seen contractors fired for jaywalking.

I've had to fill out a safety report for moving my belongings (laptop and some papers) from one cube to another right next door.

....

i recently saw a notification in our incident reporting system about a candy wrapper found on the floor as a slip/trip hazard

For COP south Texas, they won't let you on site unless you are clean shaven so in the event of H2S, you can have a properly sealed SCBA.
Problem is, they don't require you to bring your own SCBA and won't supply you with one in the event of a gas leak. Just big company, bureaucratic, CYA, idiocracy.

I worked offshore on different rigs and I would say that anything that has to do with working at heights (ie. staying tied off 100%, keeping tools tied off etc..,) is pretty strict.

Keeping cell phones off deck is big since they are not intrinsically safe was another biggie. You can get tossed for either of those for sure.

Before I left the whole vapor cigarrette thing was starting to be an issue on chopper rides. Dont know where that is now.

Glad I am retired from the oilfield. HSE is running the oilfield these days. It is becoming a nanny industry. Common sense has disappeared from the oil field. Major companies like BP stress safety more than anything but they are one of the worse companies when it comes to HSE.

drill4oil78 said:

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HSE is running the oilfield these days.

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One day on a frac location my first year at BP I counted 5 safety guys between company employees and the service company. One year out of school and even I knew that was absurd

I've always worked on the downstream side, spent a lot of time on XOM sites.

- reverse parking required
- bubble mirrors so you don't run into people while going around corners
- not allowed to slip papers under someone's door as it's a slipping hazard
- must have 3 points of contact when going up/down stairs.

By the time I left, they had Operators wearing neon colored shoe laces as someone had the idea that it would prevent Operators from tripping / would make them watch where they were going.

Guy got run off for pouring out his 1/4 full bottle of water on the edge of location in WTX after it was sitting in his truck all day and had gotten warm.

Company man didn't want any fluids hitting the ground on his location. Not sure if there were other strikes against this guy leading up to that.

moses1084ever said:

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- bubble mirrors so you don't run into people while going around corners

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As someone who likes to walk very quickly and not slow down rounding corners I actually kind of like these. Overkill? absolutely. but sometimes nice to have.

Now that makes me think of another idea: the most egregious thing done to get run off.

Knew a company man to blow his top when someone told him not to have his phone by the perf guns. Went off about radio safe detonators and waved his phone up and down the length of the guns while doing so. He gone.

SidetrackAg said:

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Damn, that's crazy that OXY can do that. Have they always had that, or is that something new they've rolled out recently? I mainly worked on XTO jobs, so nothing too extreme.

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Must be a Permian thing because I worked operations for their South Texas asset and we never had cameras on location like that. Heck even in the Mid-Con there weren't things like that. Though it has changed a lot since I worked there.

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- must have 3 points of contact when going up/down stairs.

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I hate this stupid ***** WTF happens when I'm holding the handrail and pick up one foot to go up stairs? Only 2 points of contact.

Just say "hold the handrail".

What's the saying? "99% of the safety rules are because of 1% of the people." (Something like that).

No pocket knives on site because somebody was using one for something and cut themself.
Gloves must be warn on site at all times because somebody tripped and scraped their hand.

Is this a serious comment or is my sarcasm meter broken this morning?

We had a guy nick his finger on the edge of a stall in the crapper offshore. He went looking for a band aid just in case. This of course turned into months of reviews, meetings, and questions about the "incident" like "why wasn't he wearing gloves?". Biggest waste of time and money I've ever seen.

Now he brings his own bandaids offshore with him.

I was in house counsel at an international energy co in 2002. I came from private practice. First day, I was unloading my scotch from the old office into the cabinet and thought, ****, this is a big company, better not do that. Read their employee manual and it said 'employees should moderate their drinking during business hours so as not to affect their performance."

I thought: cool! But I still took the scotch home.

Now, that company has radar guns in the parking garage and wants everyone under 5 mph. And they randomly alcohol test any and everyone.

Such a sad world.

Speaking of egregious...

We had someone crash through a steel fence while attempting to reverse park (ha) a bob cat. Bobcat went through the fence,with passengers, and somersaulted about 10 feet down into a seawater canal that was at least 10 feet deep.

To this day, I don't know who was at a bigger risk of death/LTI... the moron who was almost pinned by a bobcat landing on top of him underwater.. or our 300+ lb HSE guy who flat sprinted for about 200 yards in full gear from the project office in tropical heat.

I was onsite one time when a frac crew supervisor turned in a stop card that read something along the lines of:

"I was going into the porta-john and had my coveralls half off, as I opened the door and stepped in I noticed the floor was soaking wet. Thinking it was urine pooled on the floor I tried to step backwards quickly and tripped over my halfway off coveralls and fell to the ground. I discovered later it was just water from the porta-johns being cleaned."

we made him read it on the morning ops call for turning in something that inane

Nearly half of our financial results presentation is EHS topics now. It's so hard to push back against EHS that a 90 second brief on accidents or programs instantly morphs into half an hour. I get that safety is important, but hold your own meetings. We need to do our jobs, too.

If you put an HSE spin on any sales opportunity to an O&G company, the business has a much easier time justifying it.

drill4oil78 said:

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Glad I am retired from the oilfield. HSE is running the oilfield these days. It is becoming a nanny industry. Common sense has disappeared from the oil field. Major companies like BP stress safety more than anything but they are one of the worse companies when it comes to HSE.

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When I broke into the industry in the early 90's, there were guys still smoking around the wellhead and every where on the pad. Where I work, safety is like changing your underwear or brushing your teeth, it is just something you do. It is talked about at the beginning of every meeting and at the end. Of course I work at a service company so it is something you have to do IF you want to work.

best safety moment I've seen in a while happened at a meeting I was a part of last week that is attended by multiple operators. This meeting normally starts with a brief safety moment because it's run by a larger operator who does that sort of thing. The safety moments are usually somewhat less than useful, however last week the safety moment was awesome and brief.

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And this week's safety moment is, don't fly united.

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I work for a large mechanical contractor. Do you guys see much of the "stretch & flex" in the O&G world? It is something we are starting to do at many construction sites in the AM at our tailgate/kickoff meeting and even sometimes after lunch to help prevent soft tissue injuries.

when i did some work in the shipyards in south korea they did that every morning. but i've not seen it anywhere else myself.

It's a serious comment.
It's a stupid way to try and fancy up what is meant, by saying something that makes no sense and isn't possible unless you are holding the rails with 2 hands.

"Stretch and flex" is a big thing in certain parts of Asia, especially with the Japanese Contractors (MES, MHI, etc). Not surprised that the Koreans do it as well.

The contrast is funny. The Chinese don't give a **** quality or safety. XOM had a "museum" of confiscated tools that were all made about of rebar. The Contractors were too cheap to buy the right tools.

Found the hssesssesse nerd