We undertake wide-ranging cooperation with other authorities that supervise safety in offshore petroleum activities, both as a member of AORF (the Arctic Offshore Regulators' Forum), NSOAF (the North Sea Offshore Authorities Forum) and IRF (the International Regulators' Forum), and also through bilateral agreements and meetings. This activity comprises the exchange of experience and information on topics such as regulation, supervision and serious incidents.
We have recently renewed our agreements with Canada, Brazil and Russia.
The latter agreement extends our long-term cooperation with the Russian authorities (Rostechnadzor). The PSA’s Tone Guldbrandsen was in at the start of this work some 26 years ago. “It has been an interesting cooperation and we have followed the progress of Russian regulations from being highly descriptive to more functionally oriented.”
The Russian authorities were invited to the PSA’s Arctic Safety 2020 event, planned to take place at Stavanger in March. The updated agreement was to have been signed at a bilateral meeting on that occasion. Unfortunately, the event had to be cancelled due to Covid-19 and the signing was postponed. The solution was to sign the agreement digitally by videoconference on 2 December 2020.
The updated agreement covers cooperation and experience transfer in relation to safety in the oil and gas industry within the following key areas:
- regulatory development
- licensing activities
- supervision and control
- other areas where the partners perceive a need within their industrial safety remit