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His Excellency Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada, Qatar’s Minister of Energy and Industry, highlighted the importance of safety to the country’s oil and gas sector speaking at the SPE conference in Doha.
Al-Sada called upon the industry to help promote and develop a safety culture and a safe working environment, to be prepared for the unexpected and to protect “the People, environment, assets, and reputation”.
The strategic importance of Qatar’s oil and gas sector has been the driving force behind many initiatives designed to maintain a robust and safe industry, one that implements and promotes the strictest adherence to the highest international safety regulations and standards, al-Sada said. “Our objective is the safety of people and the environment through a safety culture that constitutes the backbone of all our operations – be they offshore, onshore, upstream, or downstream,” he said.
He also said that major mega projects in the oil and gas industry place the energy sector at the heart of achieving Qatar’s National Vision and Development Strategy.
“Such an unwavering commitment by both Qatar and the sector set the dynamics for the development of the HSE discipline and it also ensures that we meet the health, safety and environmental demands of today, while creating sustainable conditions for tomorrow,” al-Sada said in his opening remarks at the 2014 Society of Petroleum Engineers Middle East Health, Safety, Environment and Sustainable Development Conference and Exhibition at the Qatar National Convention Centre.
“Our industry, is taking the search for new hydrocarbons into more intricate areas, hence creating an unprecedented need for higher levels of planning and performance. There is no doubt that our success is contingent upon our ability to integrate technological advances with safety, risk management, and environmental protection.
“We, in Qatar, are very much aware of the challenges we have to meet as we manage the rapid growth of not just our industry, but also our national economy. We are undertaking a number of complex mega projects as well as an important redevelopment of the existing Bul Hanine, Dukhan, and Al-Shaheen oil fields.”
