Safety Forum

The Safety Forum was established in 2001 to initiate, discuss and follow up relevant safety, emergency preparedness and working environment issues in the petroleum industry, both offshore and at land facilities, in a tripartite perspective.

The Forum is led by the Director-general of the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway, Anne Myhrvold, with Angela Ebbesen as technical secretary.

The following member organisations are represented in the Safety Forum:

• Norwegian Oil and Gas Association
• The Federation of Norwegian Industries
• The Norwegian Shipowners' Association
• The Norwegian Union of Energy Workers (SAFE)
• Lederne
• The Norwegian Union of Marine Engineers (DSO)
• Industry Energy (IE)
• The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO)
• The Norwegian United Federation of Trade Unions

The Safety Forum is an arena for consultation on and follow-up of a number of key projects and processes.

Projects and processes followed closely by the Safety Forum include:

• trends in risk level in the petroleum activity (RNNP)
• chemical health risk
• groups exposed to risk
• shift work, sleep and health (in Norwegian only)
• the lifeboat issue
• the Noise project
• follow-up of the Deepwater Horizon disaster

The forum’s strategic agenda assigns a central place to major accident and working environment risks as well as tripartite collaboration between employers, employees and government.

In addition, the forum is concerned to discuss other industry conditions which are significant for safety and the working environment. These include such aspects as capacity, expertise and operating parameters.

Provision is made for mutual sharing of knowledge and information related to the forum’s priority areas.

The forum is also a collaborator on and consultation body for White Papers related to health, safety and the environment (HSE) in the petroleum industry.

An annual conference is held by the forum, where key HSE challenges are presented to and debated by some two hundred participants.