IRF Summit Conference 2011 | |
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| On behalf of the International Regulators’ Forum (IRF) the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) will host an extraordinary safety summit conference in Stavanger, Norway, on 4 and 5 October 2011. |  |
The Deepwater Horizon/Macondo in the spring of 2010, and the West Atlas/Montara in August 2009, disasters have called for a paradigm shift in global attitudes to and requirements for safety and environmental protection in offshore petroleum activities.
Consequently, a challenging range of expectations has been aroused for better coordination of global regulatory efforts in the petroleum industry, the establishment of the highest cross-border safety standards on land and offshore, and promotion of a generally more efficient coordination of supervisory regimes at national safety authorities in order to enhance health, safety and environmental conditions in the industry.
The IRF plays an important role in this work. The forum held a conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, from 17-20 October last year for all those with an intrest in offshore facility safety and regulatory practices. |  |
At the IRF’s Annual Meeting, which took place immediately after this successful conference in Vancouver, the members agreed to focus on the following areas of priority: - safety culture and leadership
- BOP integrity and operational issues
- further development of performance indicators for assessing the health, safety and environment performance of member countries
- establishment of criteria for the acceptance of company competence and capacity by the members and, not least,
- the use of best standards and industry best practice.
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| The IRF also agreed to hold an xtraordinary summit conference for regulators and industry players as early as 2011 in order to maintain momentum in this area. |  |
| The summit will involve a number of high-level presentations and two sessions of round-table discussions by all the delegates to explore and take forward the issues raised. It has been structured to provide opportunity for reviewing all that has happened over the past year in learning and applying the lessons from Macondo and Montara, and for identifying what more needs to be done by both industry and regulators. Key issues at the conference will include updates on progress in four ot the five IRF priority areas listed above. |  |
| A welcomme evening for all participants will be held on Monday 3 October.
The PSA is responsible for the technical organisation of the conference, which will take place in the Stavanger Hall at the Clarion Hotel. This is the city's most modern conference hotel. I look forward to welcoming representatives from management and employees in petroleum, contracting and service companies, as well as from national, regional and international interest groups, to this important summit conference. |  |
Magne Ognedal
Chair of the 2011 IRF summit conference |  |
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