Waltersmith HSE week harps on safety as personal responsibility

Waltersmith Petroman Oil Limited, operator of Ibigwe field located in Oil Mining Lease (OML) 16, has reiterated its commitment to the safety of its staff, host communities and their environment as it hopes to achieve its target of “goal zero” incident in years.

With a stringent safety regime in place to bring the risk of any accident associated with oil and gas operations down to the absolute minimum and/or prevent major incidents that could result in multiple fatalities or injuries, or loss of infrastructure critical to the economy, Waltersmith in its 2019 HSE Week, with the theme “Safety- my responsibility”, said the week-long activity is to further emphasize the need to remind all staff/support staff and contractors to take safety as personal responsibility.

“As a company, we are committed to full implementation of our safety policies. We will support all staff/support staff and contractors in taking time to work safely. We will address every safety concern promptly,” said Abdulrazaq Isa, chairman/chief executive officer, Waltersmith Petroman.

“If you stop a job for safety reasons, we will back you up. If there is an incidence, we will fully investigate and share the lessons learnt to prevent re–occurrence. We will recognize any staff that reports the highest number of near misses,” Isa added.

The genesis of the HSE week can be traced to 2011 when the company had a blowout incident on a drilling project. No life was lost but 6 people sustained injuries and millions of dollars went up in flames.

“We have learnt that accidents are caused by human or equipment failure in one form or another. We have also learnt that all accidents are preventable, subsequently we have safely drilled 6 wells from the lessons learnt,” Isa said adding that in March 2019, Waltersmith clocked two million-man hours without lost time incidence (LTI).

This year’s HSE week witnessed the participation of the industry regulator – Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Imo state Government Fire Fighters, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Shell Petroleum and Development Corporation (SPDC), Seplat Petroleum and other service providers.