Today, BSEE Director Brian Salerno spoke at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station's (TEES) Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center International Symposium in College Station, Texas. The two and a half day symposium is a meeting place for industry, academia, government agencies, and other stakeholders to discuss process safety research.
Director Salerno delivered a keynote address, focusing on a commitment to safety and the importance of managing risk while exploring new technologies. Director Salerno also discussed BSEE's approach to safety culture through the Safety and Environmental Management System (SEMS) program – 'It requires the operator to develop a SEMS plan suitable to their activities, implement it, and then undergo periodic audits by third parties. This SEMS process supplements our own government inspections of offshore facilities, so we call it a hybrid approach.'
The Texas Engineering Experiment Station in partnership with Texas A&M University, University of Texas and University of Houston, manages the Ocean Energy Safety Institute (OESI), which was established in 2013 with the goal of making offshore energy safer for people and the environment. OESI facilitates research and development, training of Federal workers on identification and verification of Best Available and Safest Technology (BAST), and implementation of operational improvements in the areas of offshore drilling safety and environmental protection, blowout containment and oil spill response.
More information on OESI is available here.
