Permit to Work and Isolation in Oil and Gas

How work is authorized and equipment is isolated at batteries, compressor stations, sour gas plants, well pads and pipelines, building on the general permit and lockout courses: lessons from Pasadena, Partridge-Raleigh, Williams Geismar, a 2018 Alberta well site fatality and a Canadian regulator's 2022 hazardous energy advisory, the general duty clause and multi-employer policy, 29 CFR 1910.147 and its drilling, servicing and hot tap exclusions, PSM safe work practices and hot work permits, 1910.146, 1926 Subpart AA and 1910.252, SEMS offshore, API RP 54, RP 2009 and Std 2015 and IOGP life-saving rules, permit roles at remote and multi-employer sites, permit types and linked certificates, hot work and gas testing in sour service, line opening and vessel entry, planning and preparing the plant with depressuring and purging, risk-based isolation selection, wells and pipelines, isolation certificates, group lockout, hold tests and overrides, simultaneous operations and frac hits, handover, suspension, revalidation and de-isolation, and a turnaround permit plan with audits.

HSE-333 12 lessons · 5 h 27 min

Offered by HSM University · Safety Training

This is the American version of this course. See the Canadian version.

What you'll learn

Explain why permits and isolation are harder on oil and gas sites, and draw permit and isolation lessons from Pasadena, Partridge-Raleigh, Williams Geismar, a 2018 Alberta well site fatality and the CER's 2022 hazardous energy advisory.
Map the legal and standard sources of permit and isolation duties on US oil and gas sites, including the general duty clause and multi-employer policy, 1910.147 and its exclusions, PSM safe work practices and hot work permits, 1910.146, 1926 Subpart AA, 1910.252, SEMS, API practices and life-saving rules.
Assign permit roles on remote, multi-employer oil and gas sites, plan issuer workload on a route, apply competence and authorization rules, and involve the control room.
Select the permits and linked certificates needed for oil and gas work, including hot work in classified areas, line opening, entry, ground disturbance, critical lifts, pressure tests, radiography and safety system overrides.
Plan hot work in hydrocarbon and sour service, including alternatives to hot work, gas test points, test order, acceptance criteria, retest intervals, continuous monitoring and the fire watch.
Control line opening and vessel or tank entry under permit, using first-break matrices, controlled zones, positive isolation, continuous monitoring and on-site rescue, and coordinate pressure testing, radiography and critical lifts.
Plan a job and prepare the plant, including work packs, field walk-downs, depressuring, draining and purging calculations, and checks for what an isolation might trap.
Select the isolation level for each point using a risk-based standard, recognize devices that are not isolations, apply barrier principles to wells and pipelines, and handle deviations.
Build and verify isolation certificates by tracing every path, locking valves and actuated equipment, managing group lockout across contractors, running hold tests and controlling overrides and long-term isolations.
Manage simultaneous operations on pads, plants and pipelines with SIMOPS plans and matrices, frac-hit controls, construction boundaries and control room coordination.
Carry out handover, suspension, revalidation, de-isolation and permit closure, including emergency suspension and handover between contractors and operations.
Recognize human factors that undermine permits, use electronic permits and audits well, and assemble and check a complete permit and isolation plan for a turnaround task.

Course content

12 lessons · 5 h 27 min total · final exam

1 Why permits: lessons from oil and gas incidents 30 min · quiz
2 Law and standards for permits and isolation in oil and gas 26 min · quiz
3 The permit team on oil and gas sites 26 min · quiz
4 Permit types on oil and gas sites 28 min · quiz
5 Hot work and gas testing in hydrocarbon and sour service 26 min · quiz
6 Line opening, vessel entry and other high-risk work under permit 26 min · quiz
7 Planning the job and preparing the plant 27 min · quiz
8 Isolation planning I: selecting the isolation standard 27 min · quiz
9 Isolation planning II: certificates, group lockout, verification and overrides 29 min · quiz
10 Simultaneous operations on pads, plants and pipelines 26 min · quiz
11 Handover, suspension, revalidation and closing permits 28 min · quiz
12 Capstone: human factors, electronic permits, audits and a turnaround permit plan 28 min · quiz
E Final exam 20 questions

Requirements

Recommended background. You can start any course at any time.