INTERNATIONAL REGULATORS FORUM
GLOBAL OFFSHORE SAFETY
IRF Terms of Reference
Background
The scope of the offshore oil and gas industry is global. Both major and independent companies work around the world and are required to deal with a number of different regulatory regimes. They regularly move personnel and equipment from one country to another, and in some cases, integrated operations extend across international boundaries.
IRF members believe that both industry and government benefit from a good offshore oil and gas safety record practice, which leads to lower costs and greater public confidence. In 1994 it was recognized that government regulators working together had the potential to improve safety performance within their jurisdictions by sharing information. This led to the creation of the International Regulator’s Forum (IRF), whose members are dedicated to the common cause of raising offshore health and safety standards.
Objectives
The objectives of the IRF are:
To promote best sustainable safety performance globally and the concept that it is inseparable from and interdependent with best sustainable economic performance.
To enable an exchange of information among regulators on:
Offshore health and safety trends;
Industry health and safety performance;
Lessons from incidents;
Industry best practice;
Regulatory practice; and
Measuring the effectiveness of regulatory activities.
To provide a network of offshore petroleum health and safety regulators for mutual support and advise when required.
Ways of Working
The IRF achieves its objectives through:
An annual plenary meeting.
Communication among members between annual meetings, as the need arises;
The formation of programme working groups, and / or the commissioning of other competent stakeholder organizations, to advance issues of importance to the IRF;
The organization of an International Regulators’ Offshore Safety Conference from time to time, which includes presentation of awards for significant safety improvement initiatives;
The active maintenance of an IRF web site for the purpose of disseminating outputs from programme initiatives, and for posting of information consistent with IRF objectives; and
Individual IRF member country outreach initiatives.
Agenda items at annual meetings include country updates and technical sessions, as notified to the host agency in advance. Both cover health and safety issues likely to be of common interest, with technical sessions addressing matters such as lessons from incidents, research findings, and regulatory initiatives. Annual meetings also include a review of joint activity during the previous year, and consideration of any shared work to be carried forward in the coming year, with agreed commitment and responsibility for the topic lead.
Meetings are to be conducted in English with openness and honesty, and participants respect the confidentiality of information shared with them. To enable this, meetings must remain small, with participants sending delegations no larger than 3, except for the host agency.
Participants in the forum are authoritative decision makers, from appropriate regulatory agencies, competent to speak about key operational, technical and policy issues. They have access to sufficiently reliable data to enable meaningful discussion.
All participants are committed to making a contribution to the working of the IRF by actively participating in the annual plenary meetings and programme working groups, in hosting the annual plenary meeting on a rotational basis, in addressing IRF matters that may arise between meetings in a timely manner, in assisting the hosts in arranging the International Regulators’ Offshore Safety Conferences, and in contributing to keeping the IRF website alive and current.
IRF participants are:
National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority, (NOPSA)
Petroleum Safety Authority, Norway, (PSA)
US Minerals Management Service, (MMS)
New Zealand Department of Labor, (DOL)
Canada-Nova Scotia, and Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador, Offshore Petroleum Boards, (CNSOPB / C-NLOPB)
Brazilian National Petroleum Agency, (ANP)
The Health and Safety Executive, Great Britain, (HSE)
State Supervision of Mines, the Netherlands, (SSM)
