Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) is preparing to double production by 2020. Already a top global exporter of crude oil, KOC plans to drive up production from 2.1 million barrels per day to 4 million barrels per day, but greater production means greater risk, said Khaled Al Mansouri, president of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) and International Centre of Business Resilience (ICBR).
“As long we operate in a risky working environment, such as the oil and gas industry, incidents will happen, and we will see our share of them. The outcome will depend on how well our emergency responders, employees, and contractors respond, manage, and learn from them,” said Nasser Al Buhairi, chief security officer & head of the emergency coordination Unit, KOC. “Kuwait has had its own challenges—not the least of which was recovering from the invasion in 1991, and we have our methodologies for dealing with them.”
During the conference, Al Buhairi will present a case study that illustrates how managers can prioritise emergency response plans according to the criticality of different equipment.
Commenting on the significance of crisis and risk management in Kuwait, Peter Johnson, HSE trainer at Chevron, Kuwait, and former Incident Commander of the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA, USA), said that risk management is a discussion that occurs each and every day around the world in all sectors.
“It is only through the development of partnerships at all levels that any company or government can succeed in their goals. This is truest in emergency response, where all concerned entities need to collaborate in order to effectively respond to a disaster, and ensure the welfare of people first. When I was at FEMA, we interacted with over 70 other federal agencies and works with contracts in order to respond to disasters effectively,” said Johnson.
