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Research Questions
The oil and gas industry faces many
criticisms when it comes to health and safety of its employees. This is
due to the numerous activities within the industry that include chemical
use for various processes (Cottle and Guidotti, 1990). These include:
drilling, cementing, completion, stimulation, and production (Cottle and
Guidotti, 1990). The occupational hazards of exposure to these agents have
received little attention, as well as the types of health and safety
strategies that firms implement. Thus, this study will identify
descriptively the occupational safety and health issues in the oil and gas
industry and the policies that companies use.
The study will try to answer
the following questions:
1.
What are the health and
safety issues in the oil and gas industry?
2.
What are the health and
safety policies that oil and gas companies implement?
3.
What are the challenges that
oil and gas companies face in the prevention of hazards and accidents?
4.
What can be recommended to
improve the health and safety practices in the oil and gas industry?
There are various health and safety issues
in the oil and gas sector. The Health and Safety Executive even fail to
specify every safety and health concerns because of the diversity of the
industry. In the HSE website, there are guidance on minor issues such as
personnel transfer basket, interaction between utility systems connection,
and many others (HSE, 2006); and major issues such as moving helidecks,
examination of passenger lifts, examination of offshore cranes, safety
installations of
unearthed electrical distribution systems, and many others (HSE, 2006).
Even though such issues are mentioned and discussed, there are many other
safety and health issues that were not thoroughly discussed in the
website. This study will try to verify the list of safety and health
issues in the oil and gas sector by interviewing managers and staffs of
HSE and the Department of Trade and Industry, Oil and Gas sector.
Companies are the ones that
experience health and safety problems and the ones that implement health
and safety measures. The HSE and the DTI only provide the guides. Thus, by
exploring the safety and health measures of oil and gas companies, and the
issues they usually experience, a descriptive framework of their
experiences can be documented and analyzed – basically to determine if
such issues are being given importance by the HSE and the DTI.
Research Goals
This study will try to achieve
the following research goals:
1.
To be able to acquire as
many publications about safety and health issues and measures in the oil
and gas industry, not just in UK, but also in other countries.
2.
To interview and survey head
and staffs of HSE and DTI oil and gas industry.
3.
To study the data collected
from literatures and the respondents and look for relationships that are
important in the study’s issue.
Research Plan and Methodology
The first month will be
dedicated on the knowing more about the problem of the research. This will
be followed an in-depth literature search on the internet and local
libraries. Literature search will continue for as long as four months. The
three among those four months will also be dedicated in knowing more about
the research design and methods chosen for the study. The following months
will be dedicated in data collection. A letter of permission to conduct
research will be submitted to HSE and DTI. Several oil and gas companies
in the UK will also be chosen for interviews and surveys. Data analysis
will soon follow. The data will be analyzed both qualitatively and
quantitatively. Quantitative testing is for the data collected from oil
and gas companies, basically to find out the statistical prevalence of
health and safety issues, and the prevalence of measures they apply.
Multi-method is the chosen
means of conducting this research so that data collection can be flexible
and the topic will be better explained and elaborated.
Overview of the
Dissertation
The dissertation will have 5
chapters. The first chapter will introduce the problems of the study, aims
and objectives, as well as the methodology used. Then, the second chapter
will deal with providing the details about the basic variables of the
study. Here, the oil and gas industry in the UK will be explored. The
rules and regulations on safety and health in the oil and gas sector will
also be discussed as well as the different issues and measures that oil
and gas companies face and apply. The third chapter will present the data
collected from the HSE and the DTI. Each data will be followed by
discussions guided by references from related literatures. Then, the
fourth chapter will present and discuss the data collected from the
selected oil and gas companies in the UK. This will include the
presentation of qualitative and quantitative data acquired, and
discussions on each of them. Finally, chapter 5 will present the
conclusion of the study, as well as the recommendations.
Expected
Results
The study expects to find
several barriers in implementing health and safety measures in oil and gas
companies, such as employee participation, and lack of specific safety and
health issue descriptions. The study also expects to find many companies
failing to meet the guidelines and procedures recommended by HSE and DTI.
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