Adnoc HSE report assures that all Group companies adhere to HSE management under Adnoc policy
Adnoc has established an envious reputation for the measures it takes to ensure environmental protection.
Setting policies which help enforce rigid standards, Adnoc has realised a number of ambitious projects with regards to environmental preservation.
Every year Adnoc announces the winners of its Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) awards.
For the 2000 report, environmental performance indicators were steady, said Adnoc.
In particular, the report showed how Adnoc prioritised environmental protection by minimising air emissions, treating oily water, disposing effluent water through disposal wells and the reduction of waste disposal to the sea.
Zadco was recognised during the year for an environmentally-friendly offshore well clean up and testing project (conducted jointly with Adma-Opco) and mangrove afforestation on Zirku Island (jointly with Japan Oil Development Company (Jodco) and the Environmental Research and Wildlife Development Agency (ERWDA)).
Well drilling in Abu Dhabi's offshore carbonate reservoirs requires acid stimulation in order to produce the wells at their potential.
This process must be followed by flowing back the well and cleaning it up to get rid of the plugging products resulting from the acid reaction with the reservoir formation.
The old practice was to flare the produced effluents and dump spent acid and produced water in the sea (in order not to cause major corrosion problems to the production facilities and MOL). Such practices were causing major sea and air pollution.
A joint team from Adma-Opco, Zadco and the service providers worked together to assess and evaluate various options. The solution had to be undertaken as a multi-stage process as follows:
Initial stage (1998-1999)
Second stage (year 2000)
This stage greatly improved the quality of the separated water dumped to the sea, by reducing its oil content from 2,000 parts per million (ppm) to approximately 100 ppm through the introduction of skimmers.
And joint teamwork on this project produced sound solutions, according to Adnoc.
For the mangrove afforestation project, Zadco and the ERWDA decided to develop an experimental mangrove plantation on Zirku Island in order to provide a positive contribution to the marine environment and enhance the current ecosystem.
Adco, another Adnoc operating company, was also recognised in the HSE awards for its contribution to environmental preservation.
The company completed during 2000 a novel method of eliminating the need for venting sweet gas at well sites.
Solar panels were used to generate local power at remote well sites, and this power is used to drive the chemical injection pumps as well as the hydraulic pumps of the well head control panels.
This eliminates the need for pneumatic gas drivers, which are used to drive the chemical injection pumps, as is the case in the existing gas systems in the Bab field.
Replacing the sweet gas-based design with the solar option eliminated the need to vent nine million cu ft per day of sweet gas at 142 wells in the Asab and Bab fields; eliminated the safety risks associated with a continuous vent at the well site; reduced CH4 emission by 17,000 tonnes per year, representing 75 per cent of the annual CH4 emissions of Adco; saved $8 million in life cycle costs; and enhanced operational and maintenance aspects by using a solar system which is virtually maintenance-free.
Adnoc's HSE report assures that all Adnoc Group companies continue to implement Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) management in accordance with Adnoc corporate policy.
The Adnoc HSE Management System (HSEMS) was introduced in 1997 and is based on a model developed by the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP), of which Adnoc is a member.
The OGP model has also been used as a building block for ISO14001, the international standard on environmental management systems.
For Adnoc's marine companies, the implementation of the Adnoc HSEMS and ISO14001 have gone hand-in-hand, demonstrating that the requirements of both systems are very similar.
On the safety front, Adnoc's goal remains to have zero lost time accidents, providing a healthy place to work and to minimise its impacts on the community. Indeed, the Group has a clear strategic objective to achieve world class performance in safety management.
Adnoc implements several methods to determine root causes, improve management systems and share experience from each incident.
The Group has already conducted a great deal of work on introducing modern safety methods in its operations.
Adnoc Group companies have learnt much from applying Health, Safety and Environmental Impact Assessments (HSEIAs) in recent years, using predictive methods which have been introduced to map health hazards at the conceptual stage. These methods include mathematical modelling, preliminary hazard analysis and risk management.
The Group has observed that safety is so closely linked with project engineering that it is impossible to separate them for HSEIA purposes.
The independent third-party consultant is limited to marginal testing of the project's safety provisions, checking that all required safety studies have been done and recommendations implemented.
Adnoc guidelines require that HSEIAs are carried out for all significant projects started after 1997 or for major changes of an existing facility.
HSEIAs follow project phases and address environment, safety and occupational and public health.
The first HSEIA report is produced at the end of the FEED stage, and evaluates the essential HSE aspects of the proposed design.
A second report is produced after the detailed engineering design, covering the HSE aspects of the construction and commissioning phase of the project.
A third report is then produced before construction and commissioning are completed, and evaluates the intended operation of the facility. An HSEIA is also required when a facility is decommissioned.
As predictive methods have become common tools, the models have become so reliable that the differences between predictions and actual measurements have become negligible.
Many HSEIA recommendations have concerned gaseous emissions and waste management, with fewer recommendations being made on actual engineering design.
Adnoc says that, ideally, both health and environmental protection should become as much a part of project development as safety already is, changing the role of the consultant to one of verification.
This verification is needed to ensure that internal HSEIAs produced by project engineering contractors are sufficiently objective and critical.
Adnoc also says it regards HSE training as an investment and makes programmes available to its employees on a continuous basis. To achieve this, Adnoc has organised, as part of a continued programme, training in environmental health, occupational hygiene and environmental protection.
