International Conference on Barents 2020 project

Gazprom VNIIGAZ hosted the final events within the project entitled “Barents 2020. Assessment of International Standards for Safe Exploration, Production and Transportation of Oil and Gas in the Barents Sea”. The events included a workshop on risk management at Arctic production facilities, meetings of the project working groups, a meeting of the project Steering Committee and the 4th International Conference.

The Conference participants received greetings from Vlada Rusakova, Member of the Management Committee – Head of the Strategic Development Department of Gazprom and Alexander Zazhigalkin, Deputy Head of the Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology. Opening the Conference were Tatyana Lobanova, Deputy Head of the Strategic Development Department of Gazprom and Nils Andreas Masvie, Regional Director of DNV Eurasia.

DNV (Norway) and Gazprom are the event initiators. The project Steering Committee is also represented by members from the Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology (Rosstandart), Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Supervision (Rostekhnadzor), Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Standards Norway, Rosneft, Statoil, Shtokman Development AG, Total, Eni and OGP.

The Conference summarizes the four-year lifespan of the Barents 2020 project aimed at assessing the applicability of the existing international standards and identifying the basic lines for international standards in order to ensure safe oil and gas production and hydrocarbons transportation in the Barents Sea. The project findings are applied both in technical regulations of Russia and Norway and on the international level. The International Standardization Organization (ISO) has set up a new ISO/TC 67 Subcommittee (SC 8) for Arctic Operations. The Barents 2020 project achievements lay the foundation for the SC activities.

The Barents 2020 international project is aimed at assessing the applicability of the existing international standards for safe oil and gas production and hydrocarbons transportation in the Barents Sea conditions that differ greatly from those of the North Sea and other Arctic seas as well as to offer proposals on upgrading the regulatory system in this area.

The main result of the project was a list of standards comprised of 130 documents which were selected and recommended for the use in the Barents Sea operations.