The official name of the country is the state of
Qatar. It is in Western Asia, beside the Persian Gulf. Geographically we can
say it’s between latitudes 24° and 27° N, and longitudes 50° and 52° E. It is
approximately 11000sq km. Their cost line about 370km. Their main economic power is oil. Before
discovering oil, they were known for their sea trade and pearl hunting.
Figure 1: Qatar. Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar
Most of the land of Qatar is low, plain and
unproductive which is covered with sands. Weather is very hot and humid in
summer and mild in winter.
Qatar is using GIS technology in various ways,
especially in highway construction. They use GIS and mapping to adjust with the
geographical condition, giving idea of solution, feasibility study, quality assurance,
and survey and environment safety of their country with the engineering team.
What Safety
& Environment
The managers or the department in a company who are
responsible for environment issues, employee’s health and safety are called EHS
(Environmental Health and Safety). It is also known as SHE or HSE department.
The responsibilities of EHS are to prevent accidents
or incidents and also give protection or mainly reduce any negative effect from
company’s activity.
EHS
guidelines are of the international finance corporation for Good International
Industry Practice (GIIP).
1. Environmental
1.1 Air Emissions and
Ambient Air Quality
1.2 Energy Conservation
1.3 Wastewater and
Ambient Water Quality
1.4 Water Conservation
1.5 Hazardous Materials
Management
1.6 Waste Management
1.7 Noise
1.8 Contaminated Land
and Remediation
1.9 releases to water
1.10 releases to land
1.11 use of raw
materials and natural resources
1.12 energy emitted,
heat/radiation/vibration
1.13 waste and
by-products
2. Occupational Health
and Safety
2.1 General Facility
Design and Operation
2.2 Communication and
Training
2.3 Physical Hazards
2.4 Chemical Hazards
2.5 Biological Hazards
2.6 Radiological
Hazards
2.7 Personal Protective
Equipment (PPE)
2.8 Special Hazard
Environments
2.9 Monitoring
3. Community Health and
Safety
3.1 Water Quality and
Availability
3.2 Structural Safety
of Project Infrastructure
3.3 Life and Fire
Safety (L&FS)
3.4 Traffic Safety
3.5 Transport of
Hazardous Materials
3.6 Disease Prevention
3.7 Emergency
Preparedness and Response
4. Construction and
Decommissioning
4.1 Environment
4.2 Occupational Health
and Safety
4.3 Community Health
and Safety
Qatar’s steps
on Safety & Environment
Qatar is very concern about Safety &
Environment. For example, they keep changes in policies for fuel and
environmental management even in their aviation industry. They know these
changes are to adapt with fast changing business, political and social environment.
Qatar’s medical officers are getting training in US.
They had incorporated most advanced medical equipment and training. Qatar has a
medical school which is focusing on children and woman’s health.
Qatar is importing products from US, like
* Workplace safety
equipments.
* Oil and gas
field-related safety and security equipment
* Fire detection and
prevention equipment particularly for oil and gas facilities
To prevent the exploitation of hydrocarbon
resources, Qatar has some environmental laws for their Gas and Oil industries. To
save the energy sectors, this state also absorbed regional and international
conventions and treaties. They also joined with the global effort to preserve
their marine life and atmosphere.
Qatar has made regional and mutual agreements with
international agreement for the Environment safety of their own country and the
world. For example:
* Montreal Protocol for
the protection of the ozone layer
* The Basel Convention
on the control of trans-boundary movements of hazardous wastes and their
disposal
* The United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
* The International
Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL 73/78)
Figure 2: Map of the State of Qatar showing major
oil and gas fields and pipelines
Gas and
Petroliam in Qatar
Qatar has world’s third largest reserves of Natural
Gas.
Qatar is planning to invest about $70 million for
mostly for their main natural resource Natural Gas sector. They are also
building LNG trains (is a liquefied natural gas plant's liquefaction and
purification facility) and also ordering world’s largest LNG (liquefied natural
gas) tankers.
Environmental
Protection
Qatar has national environmental protection laws to
Natural Gas Industries on exploration, processing, transportation, storage and
domestic utilization. They are Decree Laws No. 4 (1977), No. 11 (2000) and No.
30 (2002).
Law No. 4 of 1977 is on “The Conservation of Petroleum Resources”. It has the
regulations on petroleum exploration, production and operations.
They made the modification at
Law in 2002. Here they added regulations on all activity of Health, Safety and
Environment (HSE), which includes the responsibility for monitoring and control
of safety, industrial hygiene and the working environment with all previous
regulations.
The fundamental objective of
the “National Environmental Protection Law” is
(i)
Pursuit of sustainable development
principles in the utilization of natural resources;
(ii)
Preservation and protection of the
natural environment against environmental pollution from all sectors;
(iii)
Use of environmental impact assessment
to monitor State projects;
(iv)
Development of contingency plans for emergency
preparedness in the state;
(v)
Control of hazardous wastes movement;
(vi)
Protection of the atmospheric
environment;
(vii)
Protection of the aquatic environment;
and
(viii)
Protection of the marine environment
against oil spill, municipal and industrial toxic wastes from land-based
sources.
This “National Environment Law” includes both the
industrial activities and equipment. Like
* Sour gas sweetening
facilities.
* Open combustion
sources;
* Gas turbines;
* Loading tankers;
* Oil, LNG and gas
production.
* Fugitive emissions
* Petrochemical plants.
* Wastewater emission
standards
* Thermal criteria for
the abovementioned facilities
* For air quality… standards
for sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, inhalable particulates
ozone and lead.
All the regulations are
to save the marine environment from pollution. Like
* Organic and toxic
trace metals
* Chemical oxygen
* pH and thermal
pollution (SCENR 2003)
All the regulations are regularly reviewed and
reported by QP top management to ensure those meets the national standards.
Organizations
for Environmental Safety
In Qatar, there are many government and non
government organization that are working and giving training for Qatar’s
Environmental Safety. The professionals who are related with Environmental
Health and Safety are playing vital role for the safety and wellness of
workers. Especially for those people, are
working, in mining and with the related industries.
The Environmental professionals inspect and assess
every issues related with the workers to ensure their good health and accident
free working environment. These professional has investigation skill, technical
knowledge in health and safety and more over they have interpersonal skill.
Training:
These professional gets training on some important
issues related with environmental safety, like:
* They
get training to get enough knowledge and skill to inspect and asses effectively,
check the facilities in the workplace for workers health and safety.
* understand
and apply effectively all necessary government legislation and policies.
*
Indentifying and correct the existing rules and check the possible occupational
health and safety hazards.
* performing
investigation on accident.
* performing
proper risk assessment.
*
developing strategies to control risks.
*
Creating and providing safety training programs, for workers.
* Handling
and storage hazard rescue materials in work place.
* Professionalism
and responsibility in work.
Industries
are following this:
Accident at Oil and Gas industry cause damage in
human life and also threaten to the environment. These accidents effects go on
the company and human for years. Every year millions of dollar expends for restoration
of these accidents. Many of these incidents suddenly come up. But many
repeatedly happen, for the lack of good practice of rules and regulations of
industry safety and health management system. It means that company isn’t
taking lessons from past.
Industries in Qatar are committed to follow Environmental
rules for their staffs. Their main concern areas are:
* Safety
rules: Industries are developing safety rules for their employees to
prevent any hazard. They reward who follows the safety rules correctly. They
also checks are the rules are following by the staffs or not.
* Personal
safety: Here companies checks their rules that are they following by the
employees and are these helping to prevent the accidents or not. Companies want
to make their strategy simple and easy to follow, that their employees don’t
feel problem to go with those.
* Security
and human rights: To maintain human right, the companies protect and give
safety to their employees. And provide them a secure working environment.
Award:
Qatar Petroliam (QP) provides an award on “Health,
Safety and Environment Excellence (HSE) Award“. This award has been launched at
2010 to encourage QP’s business unit, joint venture companies and contractors
to promote HSE culture.
Because of this award, all will know about that
company who successfully implementing programs, taking initiative to achieve excellent
in management for safe and secure occupational environment and who are
implementing rules in their daily operations.
Conclusion
Qatar is committed for Environmental Safety. For
best practice of maintaining environmental resources Qatar is taking help from
world’s known researchers. And for better environmental research Qatar has The
Environment Studies Center (ESC) at Qatar University.
References:
10. http://www.greenprophet.com/2012/08/qatar-eco-summit-spotlights-environmental-safety/
