The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Technical Report, "Getting to Zero and Beyond: The Path Forward" sets the stage for continuing the discussion across the industry of the essential items the industry must undertake attain and sustain zero harm. Between 2009 and 2016, the SPE facilitated a series of global sessions to develop ideas for the continued improvement of Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) in the industry. These sessions brought together leaders from across the oil and gas industry, government, and academia representing diverse disciplines to discuss a simple question: How can the oil and gas industry achieve zero harm? The diverse group of participants generated many valuable ideas for a "step change" in performance, and they precipitated alignment around a vision of safety, specifically the expectation of zero harm. What the participants identified and the authors emphasize is that the industry must unequivocally set an expectation of zero harm and urgently commence with the required breakthrough in thinking, collaboration and an approach to achieve zero. For the industry, this includes the following: Define a safety vision in which zero is an attainable expectation today - not a future goal.Learn from other industries mature in human factors with the expressed intent to progress the application of human factors across the oil and gas industry.De-emphasize lagging performance indicators (injury rates) and utilize more leading indicators to ensure a progressive and preventative focus on the effectiveness of safeguards and risk reduction.Establish a no-risk-to-sharing culture - a commitment of collaboration - across the industry with the expressed intent to overcome perceived risks and competition barriers.Remove barriers to open sharing of lessons learned from major incidents, high-potential near misses and projects where, although complex and with considerable risk, the work was executed without incidents.Work with regulators to ensure they can match the best minds in industry so competent discussions about the risk-management strategies are occurring. For individual companies the actions include: Realize an interdependent HSE culture demonstrated by a commitment to a collaborative environment and consistent safety culture at the worksite regardless of company position (operator, service company, specialty contractor).Achieve operational ownership of HSE.Ensure sustainable HSE leadership. Ensuring an industry-wide commitment to the expectation of zero harm will be additive to the ongoing efforts of companies integrating elements of human factors to improve human performance. These efforts are aligned to High Reliability Organizations (HROs) and are an important evolutionary step for oil and gas companies to reach and maintain a sustainable "Getting to Zero" culture. It is this culture that helps make the expectation of zero harm attainable.

"Great minds think alike" is a well known proverb that is often attributed to the results of successful actions. Within the oil and gas industry many individually possess the great minds and successful actions but at the well site, interface opportunities exist in how to maximize the synergies of our individual successful actions. Many of the catastrophic events within the industry have occurred in the physical and virtual space where Operators, Drilling Contractors (Drillers) and Service Providers co-exist. This may be related to where the joint parties have not effectively co-existed. While each has their own physical equipment and Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Management Plans, these separate systems overlap. In this central space of overlap or interface, the risk of a catastrophic event can increase if the overlap is not effectively addressed or managed. Some collectively manage the interface using a Safety Case, Joint HSE Management Plans, and/or Simultaneous Operations Plans to identify hazards and mitigate risks. These processes and plans generally focus on addressing traditional Process Safety and Personal Safety hazards. Where the interface also jointly addresses the cultural and human factor aspects, by all parties, the risk of process and personal safety events can be greatly minimized. This paper discusses the incorporation of the aspects of Culture and Human Factors into the management of the interface; complimenting the elements of Process Safety and Personal Safety. Five key aspects are explored: Mission, Accountability, Communication, Capacity, and Learning. By overlaying these aspects into a more holistic view of ownership, changes can be made to joint responsibility and management of this interface, enabling the industry to collectively accelerate step change in how process and personal safety risks are mitigated.

Texaco International Production (TIP) is an upstream organization with operating companies in a number of non U.S. locations. These diverse operations present challenges in effectively managing environment, health and safety (EHS) issues in a manner that supports, integrates and aligns with the respective business objectives of the individual country organizations while achieving EHS success. These challenges lie in the diversity among the country organizations. They arise as a result of language and cultural differences, disparate operational needs, the degree of sophistication and self- sufficiency of the EHS component within the country organization, and differences in the legal and regulatory climate among the various countries. This paper describes TIP's development of a system called EHS Advantage developed to create and roll-out EHS initiatives designed to accomplish the full alignment and integration of EHS issues into the line operations of the company. The process is built on the active involvement of senior management, operations management and EHS professionals within TIP. Further, it includes an array of guidance materials, resources, measures and "tools" that are made available to the country business units in a timely and very usable format. Finally EHS Advantage establishes compelling incentives to all parties to make the system succeed and, as a direct result, enable TIP to succeed. Throughout the system the emphasis of EHS Advantage is placed on promoting support and achievement of TIP business objectives.