ABS secures funding for offshore safety research

Jan. 30, 2020
The Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has awarded ABS more than $2.1 million for two projects focused on strengthening safety culture in the offshore oil and gas industry.

Offshore staff

HOUSTON – The Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has awarded ABS more than $2.1 million for two projects focused on strengthening safety culture in the offshore oil and gas industry.

The money is part of $7.25 million the GRP awarded to eight projects aimed at advancing safety offshore.

A project to develop an integrated offshore energy industry safety culture evaluation, benchmarking and improvement toolbox led by Dr. Kevin McSweeney, ABS Manager of Advanced Technology & Research, in cooperation with Lamar University and the University of Houston, received $1,440,330.

A second project providing recommendations for data science technologies to aggregate essential exposure data and enable analysis of safety incident rates around the world led by Dr. Xiaozhi (Christina) Wang, ABS Vice President of Digital Solutions, in cooperation with Safetec, received $739,992.

The GRP’s competitive Safer Offshore Energy Systems Grants program supports projects that produce datasets, strategies, and tools for measurement that will promote a culture of safety in the oil and gas industry.

“A culture of safety has nine characteristics,” said Kelly Oskvig, senior program officer for the Gulf Research Program’s SOES initiatives. “Through this grants competition, we hope to provide the tools to help strengthen some of those characteristics as well as answering a few critical questions - what best practices can oil and gas adapt from other high-risk industries? How can an organization measure improvements of its safety culture? How can data be used to better understand the dangers?”

01/30/2020