Qatargas Operating Company Limited (Qatargas), Texas A&M University at Qatar (Texas A&M at Qatar, a Qatar Foundation partner university), and ConocoPhillips Qatar Ltd (ConocoPhillips) recently concluded the 12th edition of the Qatar Process Safety Symposium (QPSS), held virtually from June 27-28, 2022.
This joint symposium brings together industry experts and academia to discuss the key issues faced by the process safety community. This year it attracted more than 700 attendees with 28 local and international process safety leaders delivering talks in a thriving knowledge exchange, including eight speakers from Qatargas.
“QPSS provides an exceptional forum for process safety leaders, both within Qatar and internationally, to share challenges and solutions to our industry's process safety issues. We at Qatargas are eager to share insights from our own process safety-focused initiatives while also learning from our peers' experience. We are grateful to our partners at Texas A&M at Qatar and ConocoPhillips for collaborating to help deliver this symposium for the 12th year in a row," said Khalid bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chief Executive Officer, Qatargas.
Communication and information sharing is integral to building a robust process safety culture and the annual QPSS event provides an invaluable opportunity to share challenges and solutions to the industry's issues. This year's theme - 'Vigilance' - highlighted the essential role of leadership in fostering an effective and open safety culture that maintains a sense of chronic unease, identifies organizational blind-spots, anticipates future challenges, and is always alert to potential process safety risks.
“ConocoPhillips is a strong advocate for process safety and so we take advantage of opportunities like QPSS to exchange findings and best practices with fellow stakeholders in industry to help all of us maintain a culture of vigilance in our organizations. Together with our partners at Qatargas and Texas A&M at Qatar, we have helped shape a culture of process safety in Qatar that safeguards everyone's safety including the communities in which we operate", said Todd Creeger, president of ConocoPhillips Qatar.
“The strategic and ongoing interaction of academic researchers and industry practitioners strengthens the proactive culture of safety that benefits industry's vital human resources, its infrastructure, and the global supply chain that relies on dependable sources of energy.," said Dr. César Octavio Malavé, dean of Texas A&M at Qatar.
Qatargas' Chief Health, Safety, Environment and Quality Officer, Khalifa Ahmed Al-Sulaiti commenced proceedings with an opening address and the Qatargas annual Safe Start video, followed by a keynote speech, Mindful Leadership, by Fahad Mohammed Al-Khater, Qatargas Chief Operations Officer – Offshore, Terminals and Refining, and a talk by Dr. Katherine Andrea Lemos, Former Chairperson of the United States Chemical Safety Board (CSB) on Human and Organizational Performance.
Qatargas Process Safety and Risk Manager, Fawaz Matar Al-Shammari, delivered a presentation on Qatargas' new corporate initiative to bring about a step change in managing process safety and barrier integrity. This broader initiative covers a spectrum of process safety issues, from process safety awareness and culture and safety case operationalization, to hardware and human barrier management and safety critical element field effectiveness.
Mr. Al-Shammari also chaired a panel discussion on the theme of 'Vigilance' alongside Dr. Lemos, Dr. Sydney Dekker, Professor at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and Professor Faisal Khan, Director of the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M Qatar.
Qatargas' strong presence at the symposium was further reinforced by the following technical presentations: A Paradigm Shift – Step Change in Process Safety and Barrier Management by Fawaz Al-Shammari and Sadiq Azeez, Turning Process Safety Events Data into Actionable Insights by Wahyu Hidayat, Influence of Human Factors in Safety Culture by Joe Diotte, Managing Process Safety in the North Field Expansion Project by Weng Hoong Lim, Train 3 Extended Turnaround Planned Shutdown due to Regeneration Tubes Failure by Saad Al-Merikhi, Process Safety Event (PSE) Loss of Primary Containment (LOPC) Incident Modeling – Guidelines and Methodologies to Support Incident Investigation by Ellen Nurul Fitrie, and posters by Nasser Al-Karbi and Ahmed Barakat.
In recognition of his contribution, the QPSS Process Safety Excellence Award was presented to Qatargas' Fahad Mohammed Al-Khater.
In total, 34 speakers gave presentations and talks at the 12th edition of the Qatar Process Safety Symposium. Local experts from Qatar Petrochemical Company, Qatar Steel Company, Qatar Shell, Siemens Energy LLC, and TotalEnergies EP Qatar were joined by international voices from ConocoPhillips, Texas A&M University and its Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center, Saudi Basic Industries Corporation, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, aeShield LLC, Baker Engineering and Risk Consultants, Communications and Training International, Dekra Process Safety, Griffith University, Technip Energies, and Witlox Safety Solutions.
Qatargas is proud of its continued partnership with ConocoPhillips and the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M in sponsoring this premier national forum as a model of valuable industry-academia collaboration to drive process safety improvements within the industry.