LAHORE: Oil Marketing Association of Pakistan (OMAP) on Wednesday asked Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) to ensure safety standards as rules and regulations in all Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs).

In a letter written to Chairman Ogra Masroor Khan, Chairman OMAP, Tariq Wazir Ali said that Chairman Ogra is requested to treat this matter as a top priority and should implement it across the board as being a matter of prime concern.

He said that OMAP’s prime concern is the safety of human life followed by the safety of the environment and to avoid the occurrence of any such sudden disaster resulting from avoiding the above factors.

OMAP strongly believes that HSE should be above all discriminations or any other factor of favouritism and non-provision of a level playing field, he added.

While suggesting measures, Tariq Wazir Ali added in the letter, “To maintain safety and provision of a level playing field, Ogra should not permit operation of any storage facility or depot of any OMC whose third-party Certification has not been issued following the Oil Regulations 2016. Retail outlets should not be permitted to any non-compliant storage facility that lacks necessary NOC from the DC, MOD, Explosive Dept, or third-party fitness report for conformity with the notified technical standard for Oil storage/depot by Ogra. Operation of all such outlets that are allowed to operate based on non-compliant storage depots should immediately be revoked permission to circumvent any grave calamity.”

He added that for the petroleum industry, Occupational Safety and System Safety both are very crucial and need proper attention to avoid any sudden disaster.

To assure safety standard compliance, Ogra issued a set of Technical Rules for Storage in 2009, and OMCs, storages, and licensees were granted a grace period of five years during which they should update their storage facilities to the notified Standards.

The aforementioned Rules apply uniformly to all licensees. New guidelines for the oil industry were announced by Ogra in 2016, and both current and future OMCs were required to get licenses per those rules.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023