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History of NOPSA

In 1999, the Commonwealth Government commissioned a review of offshore safety in Australia . This was in response to the Government's 1998 commitment to review the offshore safety case regime and Commonwealth concerns over the adequacy of the current regulatory arrangements.  At the time, the States and Northern Territory (NT) carried out day to day offshore petroleum safety regulation using a combination of the safety case approach and prescriptive legislative rules.

The review included an evaluation undertaken by an Independent Review Team (IRT) of offshore safety experts. They were required to assess the effectiveness of the structure and implementation of Australia 's offshore petroleum safety management. The independent review team interviewed operators of facilities, executives and line management, workforce representatives, State/NT regulators and Federal officials.

The final report, titled Future Arrangements for Regulation of Offshore Petroleum Safety [437KB pdf], published in 2001, identified a number of shortcomings in the legislative and administrative structures. It recommended the current framework of laws be revised, and the regulatory system be restructured by establishing a national petroleum safety regulatory authority.

On 13 September 2002 , the Ministerial Council on Mineral and Petroleum Resources (MCMPR) reconfirmed their priority for improving safety in Australia 's offshore petroleum industry. The MCMPR, comprising Ministers with a responsibility for petroleum safety from across Australia , endorsed the formation of an independent national offshore safety authority. An MCMPR Communiqué [101KB pdf] records this decision.

It was agreed at this MCMPR meeting that the National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority (NOPSA) would not only regulate federal waters, as the IRT recommended, but regulate both Federal and State/NT waters. This was to ensure a consistent regulatory approach for industry across all jurisdictions. NOPSA is accountable to the Commonwealth, State and NT Ministers. Lines of Communication [15KB pdf] diagrams these relationships.

On 22 May 2003 the MCMPR Standing Committee of Officials agreed on a Transitional Plan [73KB pdf] for establishing NOPSA. The Transitional Plan identifies NOPSA's role, tasks and guiding principles; project management and government; and human resource strategy.

NOPSA began operations on 1 January 2005.

Creating a New Offshore Petroleum Safety Regulator [270KB pdf] is a paper presented at the Offshore Technology conference held in Houston , Texas , USA on 5-8 May 2003, and provides further background and establishment of NOPSA.

Operational Review of NOPSA

A review of the operations of the National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority (NOPSA) as required by Section 405 of the Offshore Petroleum Act 2006 (OPA) has been completed. The review examined progress in bringing about improvements in the occupational health and safety of the offshore oil and gas industry since NOPSA commenced operations on 1 January 2005 and the final report is available from the RET web site's NOPSA page.

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