Practical Guidance for Addressing Proposed Regulatory Changes to Improve Refinery Safety

As part of a complimentary webinar series focusing on regulatory changes by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to improve process safety in chemical facilities, ABS Group will launch the webinar Addressing Revisions to CalARP and Cal/OSHA's Process Safety Management Regulations on August 10, 2016. David Montague, ABS Group Senior Vice President for Safety, Risk and Compliance, will provide information about the California Department of Industrial Relations' proposed new Process Safety Management (PSM) standard for improving safety in petroleum refineries.

The proposed PSM Standard for Petroleum Refineries was initiated in 2014 by the California Interagency Working Group on Refinery Safety comprising members from California's EPA (CalEPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal/OSHA) divisions. The latest draft of the revised standard was published in mid-2015 and includes new prevention and management strategies to help mitigate major incidents and reduce the health and safety risks to which employees and the public may be exposed from petroleum refineries. The final standard revisions are expected to be published in the summer of 2016. 

ABS Group's webinar will provide an overview of the new CalEPA and Cal/OSHA requirements and a Q&A session with our process safety experts who worked closely with both the refining industry and regulators during the revision process. We will share insights into key elements such as safeguard protection analysis, hierarchy of hazards control analysis, damage mechanism reviews, safety culture, human factors, management of organizational change, incident investigation/root cause analysis and PSM system/metrics.

"For over 40 years, our company has gained practical and unrivaled knowledge of process safety, which has allowed us to become a trusted advisor on critical safety regulations as well as author many of the process safety guidelines now followed by industry," says Steve Arendt, ABS Group Vice President for the Oil, Gas and Chemical sector.

"Our safety, risk and compliance professionals based in our corporate office in Houston and in our California offices have prepared expert-led guidance for complying with EPA/OSHA regulations," adds Montague. 

Learn more about US regulatory reforms for process safety.