§ 7 Responsibilities pursuant to these regulations
The operator and others participating in the activities are responsible pursuant to these regulations. The responsible party shall ensure compliance with requirements stipulated in the health, safety and environment legislation.
The operator shall see to it that everyone who carries out work on its behalf, either personally, through employees, contractors or subcontractors, complies with requirements stipulated in the health, safety and environment legislation.
In addition to the duties imposed on licensees and owners of onshore facilities by individual provisions in these regulations, they are also responsible for seeing to it that the operator complies with the requirements stipulated in the health, safety and environment legislation.
According to Section 2-3 of the Working Environment Act and Section 25 of the Fire and Explosion Protection Act (in Norwegian only), the employees have a duty to contribute.
Section last changed:
01 January 2011
The provision coordinates the obligated party hierarchy in the activities, but does not change the responsibility that follows from the enabling acts.
The first subsection entails a material duty to comply with the regulations. This active required action is called the duty to ensure requirements are satisfied. A special duty to follow-up (called see-to-it duty) follows from the second and third subsections. The duty to establish, follow up and further develop a management system follows from Section 17.
Wording referring to the obligated party in the individual provisions and the importance of this
In these regulations and in regulations laid down in pursuance thereof, the obligated party is typically worded neutrally. This is done because several parties can be responsible according to the same provision. Examples of neutral wording include ”Requirements shall be stipulated for the performance of safety functions.” and ”The facility shall be designed such that…”. Another neutral form used is "The responsible party shall…”. Who the responsible party is, follows from this section's first subsection. The responsible party can thus be the operator, or others participating in the activities without being licensees or owners of onshore facilities. Licensees that are not operators, are thus not included in the term responsible party in these regulations with supplementary regulations. When the responsibility is assigned to one or more defined participants, this is clearly evident from the relevant provision. For example, the operator is the party responsible for the operation, or the employer specifically designated as the obligated party in certain provisions.
The see-to-it duty assigned to the operator, licensee and owner of the onshore facility, cf. the second and third subsections, applies throughout and is thus not mentioned in the other provisions in these regulations, nor in the supplementary regulations.
Elaboration of the individual's responsibility
Several parties can thus be responsible at the same time, but the individual's responsibility will be limited to those tasks that fall under the individual's area of responsibility. This means those tasks where the individual has control and instruction authority. The scope of the individual's responsibility can vary according to the circumstances. A participant can hardly be held responsible for breaches of regulatory requirements if the individual does not have practical control or instruction possibilities as regards the obligations in question.
The responsibility shall be defined at all times, cf. Section 6, second subsection of the Management Regulations.
Reference is also made to Section 18 of these regulations. The first subsection of Section 18 also covers participants other than the operator, and e.g. imposes a duty on contractors to follow up their subcontractors.
Licensee and owner of onshore facility
The licensee and the owner of the onshore facility are mainly responsible for facilitating the operator's execution of its tasks. The licensee and the owner of the onshore facility are also responsible for seeing to it that the operator carries out these tasks. The third subsection clarifies the duty of the licensee and the owner of the onshore facility to see to it that the operator carries out its duties.
To be able to carry out its obligations, the licensee and the owner of the onshore facility shall receive information regarding the activities. The licensee and the owner of the onshore facility shall not only relate to what is provided from the operator, but also have an independent duty to ensure that it receives sufficient information on the activities. The licensee and the owner of the onshore facility have a duty to act as regards conditions that are not in agreement with the regulations. Moreover, the licensee and the owner of the onshore facility shall see to it, through audits, that the operator carries out its tasks. The licensee and the owner of the onshore facility shall particularly see to it that the operator carries out its tasks in connection with central and important matters. This applies to e.g. the operator's management system, that the operator has an organisation that is sufficiently qualified and has sufficient capacity, that the operator handles areas of concern and other factors of particular interest to the authorities, as well as key applications to the authorities. Reference is also made to what is generally said about the content of the see-to-it duty under the operator heading.
The see-to-it duty follows from Section 10-6, second subsection of the Petroleum Act and the health legislation, and is also included in the previous Section 7 of the Working Environment Regulations. The see-to-it duty also applies in the scope of the Pollution Control Act (in Norwegian only). As regards the content of the licensee's see-to-it duty, reference is also made to the comment regarding Section 10-6 of the Petroleum Act in Odelsting Proposition No. 43 (1995-1996), pages 61 and 62. Here it is e.g. written that "The licensee shall for example, when carrying out audits, see to it that the operator fulfils its special operator duties, and through budgets and resolutions, etc. facilitate the operator's work".
Mainly, the operator, and not the licensee or owner of the onshore facility, will be subject to the duty to act. The responsibility of the licensee and the owner of the onshore facility in the scope of these regulations will, to a large extent, be fulfilled through the overall see-to-it responsibility, which follows from the second subsection.
The licensee and the owner of the onshore facility are also obligated parties in certain provisions in these regulations.
Operator
In the interest of having a common obligated party concept covering all the activities, the term operator is used.
For offshore production licenses, an operator is appointed which will be responsible for the daily management of the petroleum activities on behalf of the licensees.
For onshore facilities, an operator is appointed which will be responsible for the daily management of the activities on behalf of the licensees or owners of the onshore facility.
As a key player in the activities, the operator is especially mentioned as the obligated party in this secion's first subsection. In many cases, only the operator will be the obligated party. If so, this will be stated in the individual provisions in these regulations and the supplementary regulations.
The second subsection continues corresponding provisions in the area of safety under the Petroleum Act and rules in the previous Working Environment Regulations under the Working Environment Act, and further clarifies the Pollution Control Act (in Norwegian only). Reference is also made to the see-to-it duty that follows from the health legislation, cf. Section 3, first subsection of the Act relating to government supervision of the health service (in Norwegian only) and Section 16 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only).
The term see to it has been used as it is used in Section 10-6 of the Petroleum Act to describe the licensee's and the operator's special duty to follow up. The term see to it is used to clarify that it is primarily the individual player's duty to comply with the regulations. To see to it entails a duty, through establishment of management systems and through audits, to follow up that the participants in the activities comply with requirements stipulated in and in pursuance of the Act. The responsibility to see to it that the regulations are complied with, will thus be a general and overall duty to follow up while carrying out the activities. In particular regarding the operator's see-to-it duty, the comment regarding Section 10-6 of the Petroleum Act in Odelsting Proposition No. 43 (1995-1996), page 62, says that ”The see-to-it responsibility also entails that the operator, before and during entering a contract and during execution of the activities, shall supervise that the contract parties are competent and qualified. Furthermore, the operator shall follow up during execution of the petroleum activities, as well as check that facilities and equipment put into service and work that is carried out, maintain a prudent standard. In cases where there are different operators during the different phases, e.g. during the development phase and the operations phase, it is important that the operators carry out a necessary coordination between themselves.”
As regards the operator's see-to-it responsibility towards the contractor in the event of hiring a facility with AoC, this is described in detail in the Norwegian Oil and Gas’ “Handbook for applications for consent for well operations from a mobile facility” See also Section 25 of these regulations with Guidelines.
Other participants
Other participants as mentioned in Section 7, first subsection, means everyone participating in the activities without being licensees, owners of onshore facilities or operators. This can be other owners and users of facilities, or of property, buildings or structures, which are not onshore facilities, or those that provide services in connection with the activities, cf. also the comment regarding Section 10-6 of the Petroleum Act in Odelsting Proposition No. 43 (1995-1996), pages 61 and 62. The first subsection thus includes operators, the party responsible for operation, contractors, other owners, lessors, or users of offshore and onshore facilities, etc., and other employers.
The employees are, in principle, also among the other participants. Since the Working Environment Act limits the employees' responsibility to a contributory responsibility, it has been appropriate to separate and clarify this responsibility in the fourth subsection. The content of the responsibility of employers and employees mainly follows from Sections 2-1 and 2-3 of the Working Environment Act, respectively.
Employers
The more detailed content of the responsibility of employers as regards safety and working environment follows from the Working Environment Act. The employer shall, according to Section 2-1 of the Working Environment Act, e.g. ensure that the individual activity is organised and maintained, and that work is planned, organised and executed in accordance with the provisions provided in and in pursuance of these regulations. It follows from Section 1-8, second subsection of the Working Environment Act, who is the employer. The top manager in the enterprise has the overall responsibility for satisfying regulatory requirements, and cannot waive this responsibility by delegating tasks to others. According to the Working Environment Act, the individual employer is obliged to carry out mapping, analyses and measures as regards the working environment within its area of activity and responsibility. According to this section, the operator or the party responsible for operating the offshore or onshore facility is responsible for such mapping, analyses and measures being implemented in a planned and unified manner. The same is true for contractors responsible for carrying out manned underwater operations.
Employees
As it follows from Section 2-3 of the Working Environment Act, cf. Section 1-8 first subsection, the employees' responsibility is limited to a contributory responsibility. The employees' duty is clarified in the fourth subsection. The employees are obliged to contribute to carrying out the measures the employer implements. Employees, including supervisors, have contributory responsibility according to the instructions and delegated work tasks, etc. in the individual enterprise. Employees who are supervisors, also have a special responsibility for safety and working environment work according to Section 2-3, third subsection of the Working Environment Act.
The employer's duty to ensure that the employees are given a real possibility to participate, is mentioned in Section 13 with Guidelines, which continues the current law.
As regards the employees' obligations in connection with management systems, reference is made to Section 17.
Health
The responsible party according to the Framework Regulations shall ensure compliance with provisions that apply to the party's activities through
- the health acts mentioned in Section 5 of the Framework Regulations or
- other health legislation cf. Section 1-5 of the Petroleum Act.
As mentioned in the Guidelines regarding Section 5, the provisions in the health acts have different obligated parties.
The Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only) applies to health personnel and enterprises that provide health assistance in Norway, cf. Section 2 of the Health Personnel Act. Who and what the individual provision applies to, follows from this wording.
Several provisions in the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only) are directed through their wording towards ”health personnel” or certain categories of health personnel. One example of the latter is Section 12 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only) which, in its first subsection, mentions ”physician, nurse or bioengineer”, and physician in its second subsection. The term health personnel is defined in Section 3 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only). Key in this connection is the health personnel's duty to carry out professionally prudent operations, cf. Section 4 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only). Furthermore, health personnel shall provide immediate assistance, cf. Section 7 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only). Thus, these provisions shall be fulfilled by the individual healthcare providers. The Norwegian Board of Health Supervision carries out supervision of the health personnel in the offshore petroleum activities, now as before the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only) came into force. The latter authority can sanction health personnel in the event of breaches of the provisions, cf. Chapter 11 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only).
Health personnel shall not provide information subject to a duty of confidentiality to participants in the petroleum activities who are not health personnel or the health personnel's assistants. Reference is made to Section 25 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only) as regards communication between health personnel. Health personnel can provide information that is otherwise subject to a duty of confidentiality to petroleum activities' management or others, provided that informed consent has been secured from the party entitled to confidentiality. Reference is also made to Chapter 5 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only).
Section 26 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only) deals with e.g. the health personnel's right to provide information – insofar as possible without individualising attributes – to ”the enterprise management” when this is necessary for e.g. internal control and quality assurance of the service.
Some of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only)'s provisions, primarily Section 16, apply to enterprises that provide healthcare. These provisions apply to the operator, possibly licensee, shipping company, contractor, subcontractor or others affiliated with a health service that provides healthcare for own personnel (own employees) or others'. The obligated parties according to these provisions in the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only) depend on the organisation of the offshore petroleum activities. Reference is also made to the supplementary provisions in Section 7, first subsection of the Activities Regulations, which affirm that the operator or the party responsible for operating a facility shall ensure that anyone staying on the facility, has access to prudent and professional health services, cf. Section 16 of the Framework Regulations. And according to Section 7, second subsection of the Framework Regulations, the operator shall see to it that everyone carrying out work on its behalf, complies with requirements in the health, safety and environment acts, including relevant provisions in the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only), the Patient's Rights Act, (in Norwegian only) the Contagious Illness Protection Act (in Norwegian only) and the Health and Social Preparedness Act (in Norwegian only).
According to Section 16 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only), enterprises that provide healthcare shall be organised such that the health personnel are capable of complying with their statutory obligations, cf. above regarding these. The preparatory works contain the following in this connection: ”The most important element in this is that health personnel, regardless of work site and organisation form, shall primarily take professional consideration in the performance of healthcare. Any health personnel will, through education and qualifications, have a certain professional ”autonomy”, i.e. freedom of action to fulfil statutory obligations. Thus, Section 16 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only) indicates a constraint on the employer's management prerogative, in that the activities shall be organised such that health personnel are provided freedom to fulfil statutory obligations, and then primarily the duty to professionally practice their trade.” One consequence of Section 16 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only) is that the health service shall have a separate and independent position in professional matters, cf. Section 7, final subsection of the Activities Regulations. However, the responsible party will have the right to organise the activities within statutory limits.
The provisions in the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only) and the Contagious Illness Protection Act (in Norwegian only) are supplemented by the rules in the Patient's Rights Act (in Norwegian only). The operator or the party responsible for operating a facility shall scale and organise the health service such that the provisions of the Patient's Rights Act (in Norwegian only) can be fulfilled, cf. Section 8 of the Activities Regulations and Section 16 of the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only). The Patient's Rights Act (in Norwegian only) further means e.g. that the health service in the offshore petroleum activities shall necessarily refer the patient to the land-based specialist health service. The party responsible for the health service shall also handle transport of ill and injured personnel to land with a view towards follow-up from necessary land-based health service.
Insofar as it applies, the Contagious Illness Protection Act (in Norwegian only) can be used, through Section 5 of these regulations, for the offshore petroleum activities. This is indicated by the purpose of the Contagious Illness Protection Act (in Norwegian only). The purpose of the act is to protect the population against contagious illnesses by preventing them and keeping them from being transmitted in the population, as well as preventing that such illnesses are introduced into Norway or exported from Norway to other countries.
The Contagious Illness Protection Act (in Norwegian only) contains e.g. obligation provisions for health personnel (Chapters 2 and 3), and obligation and rights provisions for infected persons (Chapters 5 and 6). In a broad sense, the Act is an enabling act, cf. e.g. its Chapter 3.
In the Contagious Illness Protection Act, the chief municipal health officer is assigned tasks within contagious illness protection, see Section 7-2 of the Contagious Illness Protection Act (in Norwegian only). Section 12 of the Activities Regulations gives this responsibility to the physician with professional responsibility for the health service on the facility. Beyond this, no special adaptations have been made in the Act's administrative or material provisions. When following up measures according to the communicable disease legislation in the petroleum activities, the responsible physician should cooperate with personnel in the municipal health service.
It follows from Section 8, first subsection and Section 9 of the supplementary Activities Regulations that the operator or the party responsible for operating a facility shall ensure that everyone staying on the facility is ensured necessary preventive measures, examination possibilities, treatment and care outside the institution, also as regards communicable disease. According to this, the operator's responsibility will correspond to the municipality's responsibility according to Section 7-1 of the Contagious Illness Protection Act (in Norwegian only). In practice, the operator's responsibility is limited in relation to the onshore municipality's responsibility in that people staying on a facility in the offshore petroleum activities, will spend shorter or longer periods onshore.
According to Section 4-1 of the Contagious Illness Protection Act (in Norwegian only), the municipal council is granted authority, on certain conditions, to adopt prohibition against assembly, closure of establishments, curtailment of communication, isolation and removal of source of infection. This authority also rests with the Norwegian Directorate of Health in the event of serious outbreaks of hazardous communicable diseases, and when it is essential for the purpose of quickly implementing measures to prevent communication of disease. It follows from the Ministry of Health and Care Services' Regulations of 1 January 1995 relating to this which communicable diseases are considered hazardous diseases. A ”serious outbreak” is considered a relative term. This means that, according to the circumstances, the threshold is lower for classifying an outbreak as serious on a facility in the offshore petroleum activities at sea than on the mainland, cf. the safety aspect and offshore population density. It is normally considered sufficient for the professionally responsible physician for the health service in the offshore petroleum activities, in the event of the need for measures as mentioned in Section 4-1 of the Contagious Illness Protection Act (in Norwegian only), to contact the County Governor of Rogaland. The government health authority can issue an order according to Section 4-1, second subsection of the mentioned act, if applicable.
It follows from Section 5 of these regulations cf. Section 1-2 as well as Section 1-3 c of the Health and Social Preparedness Act (in Norwegian only) that this Act also applies to the operator and others that, without formal connection to a municipality, county municipality or the state, offer health and social services on facilities and vessels working on the Norwegian continental shelf. The so-called responsibility principle is key in the Health and Social Preparedness Act (in Norwegian only). This means that the party responsible for a health or social service, e.g. the operator, is also responsible for necessary preparedness measures and for the executive service, including financing, during war and in the event of crises and catastrophes in peace time, unless otherwise decided in or in pursuance of acts. In general, the Health and Social Preparedness Act (in Norwegian only) primarily contains authorisation provisions for the Ministry. The assumption for the application of these authorisation provisions is, in accordance with Section 1-5 of the Health and Social Preparedness Act (in Norwegian only), that the country is at war, that war is imminent, or – in the event of crises or catastrophes in peace time – that resolutions have been made by the King in Council. The provisions regarding emergency preparedness in the Framework Regulations with supplementary regulations are considered to safeguard several of the intentions of the Health and Social Preparedness Act (in Norwegian only).
The fact that the Medicines Act (in Norwegian only) applies to the offshore petroleum activities, has e.g. the following consequences:
Health personnel affiliated with the offshore petroleum activities shall act according to the statutory provisions that apply to them. The management system in the offshore petroleum activities shall consider such provisions. For example, the physician's duty according to Section 25 of the Act to, upon request, provide the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision with information regarding potential abuse of narcotics.
The Medicines Act's (in Norwegian only) provisions regarding who can manufacture, import and market medicines, also apply in relation to the petroleum activities.
Reference is also made to the Act's provisions.