Professionals from YPF, Tecpetrol, TEMA, ENAP, YPFB, ANCAP and Pluspetrol participated last March 9-10 of the ARPEL Process Safety Project Team meeting.

This meeting, that took place in Pluspetrol Headquarters, had as its main objective to progress in the elaboration of the Process Safety Implementation Self-Assessment Methodology for oil and gas companies. The project counts also with the collaboration of other companies like OCENSA, ECOPETROL, PEMEX and CCPS (Center for Chemical Process Safety), under the framework of a collaboration agreement signed with this institution in 2016.

The Self-Assessment Methodology, which will be launched on July, will be a tool to assess the development level of the organization in each element of a process safety management system, such as culture, management of change, risk management, indicators, auditing, among others.

The brand new ARPEL tool will be based on checklists, in order to facilitate its utilization, comparability and understanding. Likewise, it will allow to define the baseline of the companies and also to perform a gap analysis in a comprehensive manner, being this a big contribution to safety management.

The implementation of this methodology will be supported in several activities such as workshops, courses and cross-checks that the team is scheduling for 2017 and 2018.

Process Safety –the new trend regarding safety- seeks to ensure the whole operation processes of a facility in which hazardous materials are handled, being this a broader concept than the tradition occupational safety.

This concept was adopted by ARPEL and its HSE Committee, and since 2012, several activities such as workshops, best practices guidelines, courses and presentations were held, in order foster the implementation of process safety in the industry companies, to improve the performance standards and minimize the risk of incidents.