Power dressing
Health and safety
WORKWEAR
Power
dressing
The personal protective clothing and equipment
worn by upstream oil and gas employees
– whether working in the cold North Sea
or fracking in the heat of a Texan summer –
continues to become more technologically
sophisticated, writes Nic Newman.
B
efore the US introduced
the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration
(OSHA) in 2010, it was quite
common to see oil rig workers
on the other side of the Atlantic
kitted out in a scruffy oil-stained
t-shirt, jeans and boots without
any protection against fires or
falling tools. OSHA required all
technicians and service industry
employees working in the vicinity
of a rig to wear flame-resistant
clothing, steel-toe boots, hard
hats, a personal gas monitor and
safety glasses. Today, the apparel
of workers will relate not only
to their particular activity but
also the workplace environment.
Fitting-out employees with the
correct protective equipment to
safeguard them from danger and
the elements is now regarded as
a worthwhile cost, since it is also
good for staff morale.
According to Frost & Sullivan,
the protective workwear market
has grown substantially with the
huge expansion in the US shale oil
and gas industry and is set to grow
from $1.5bn in 2011 to $2.3bn by
2017. Tim Anson, European
Business Manager for the US-made
Cordura brand, observes: ‘Globally,
the workwear market is growing
by about 10–11%/y.’ Whether this
rate of growth will continue is
questionable, however, given deep
cuts in headcount in North
America’s shale oil industry and
global capital spending cuts of
$220bn in response to low oil
prices.
Driving the trends
The growth of the oil and
gas industry worldwide and
the unexpected shale energy
revolution in North America
inaugurated a major hiring drive
by oil and field service companies.
42 Petroleum Review | November 2015
The newly recruited workers,
especially to unconventional oil
working, demanded greater levels
of comfort, durability and style
whilst simultaneously meeting
the highest standards in safety
and protection. ‘Such drivers are
helping to drive innovation,’ says
Mark Saner, Workrite Uniform
Technical Manager.
At the same time, new
standards have been agreed by
OSHA, the UK Health and Safety
Executive (HSE) and the Canadian
Association of Petroleum Producers
(CAPP), as well as the International
Organisation for Standardisation
(ISO), the world’s largest developer
of voluntary international
standards. Standardisation of
clothing and equipment, for what
is essentially a global industry, is
not only good for manufacturers,
but also for the oil company’s
procurement professionals, since a
global or regional accepted
standard helps selection and
adherence to health and safety
regulations.
The introduction of lighter
multi-functional fabrics sits
alongside a trend towards smart
workwear and clothing specially
adapted to specific work activities
and conditions. In general, as Saner
suggests: ‘Oil and gas drilling
workers are looking for lighterweight, more comfortable flameresistant garments that also look
great and meet the industry
standards.’
In West Texas’s Eagle Ford,
Barnett and Haynesville shale
plays, or in Nigeria, Angola and
Mozambique, where summer
temperatures can reach 100°F-plus,
the major fear is the ever present
danger of flash fires and heat
stress. Such conditions require
lighter-weight flame-retardant
clothing. Manufacturers are rising
to the challenge − Carhartt has just
launched a new line of products it
calls FR Force, which includes
100%-cotton knit t-shirts that are
not only lightweight but also meet
the US National Fire Protection
Association 2112 flame retardant
standard.
There is also a trend towards
developing multi-functional
fabrics featuring durability and
resistance to abrasions, tears and
scuffs. For this, rather than pure
cotton, a fabric containing
antistatic fibres to prevent static
building up and sparking a fire,
plus 10% nylon for durability, is the
fabric of choice. Norway’s Wenaas
and the Cordura clothing brand
ranges embody flame-retardancy,
antistatic properties, high-visibility
and chemical resistance. So the
procurement officer for a major rig
owner, such as Transocean, can
now choose from a range of highly
functional clothing, which is
anti-stat protected, inherently
flame-retardant and high-visibility,
as well as being able to act as a
barrier to chemical spills − in other
words, a fabric that meets all the
European and US health and safety
standards for such clothing.
However, high-tech
performance isn’t enough for
some. Europe’s oil and gas workers
Testing at the SINTEF Work
Physiology Laboratory of the
ColdWear range, developed
for ultra-cold oil fields such
as Alaska, the North Sea and
Siberia
Source: SINTEF/Thor Nielsen
Health and safety
are being offered ‘image wear’,
heavily marketed designerbranded clothing such as Helly
Hansen and Dickies, especially
designed for oil and gas workers.
This trend has also moved across
the Atlantic. ‘We are now seeing
the US catch up with Europe in
adopting image wear in the
workwear market,’ explains Anson.
Designers of oil industry
workwear in the west work to the
regulations and standards
governing the composition,
method of manufacture and safety
requirements of the day. As Saner
explains: ‘Manufacturers are
tasked with developing products
that not only meet or exceed the
requirements of industry
regulations, but also do so in a way
that doesn’t sacrifice usability,
comfort, cost or practicality.’
Despite tougher regulations, it
remains the case that clothing
worn by a fire accident victim can
increase the severity of a burn. ‘I
know of numerous incidents with
severe burn injuries and resultant
fatalities in which we later
determined, if the workers had
worn no clothing [at all], their
injuries would have been less
severe, and there would not have
been any fatalities,’ says Peter
Clark Of Apparel Solutions
International.
The future of PPE
Smart clothing, known as
ColdWear, developed by Norwegian
research organisation SINTEF, is a
pioneering development for ultracold oil fields such as in Alaska, the
North Sea and Siberia. It is a fabric
range combined with sensors
designed to monitor a worker’s
temperature, humidity and
perspiration as well as their exact
location and direction of travel.
Sensors also measure external
temperatures and humidity. Such
detailed real-time information
on workers’ body condition allow
supervisors to not only monitor
health but also influence decisions
on when to stop work for the day.
And in spite of its technological
wizardry, the fabric can also be
laundered.
According to leading research
institutes, wearable technologies
will become the next megatrend.
Oil giant BP has already distributed
more than 24,500 Fitbit fitness
trackers to its North American
workforce, including those
working on oil refineries and oil
rigs, as part of a programme to cut
its staff insurance costs. As Chris
Brauer, Director of Innovation at
Goldsmiths, University of London,
explains: ‘Underwriters are more
trusting of these devices than the
self-reporting of employees.’
More technologically
sophisticated are the recently
introduced ‘smart glasses’ which
improve communications between
control staff and on-site workers.
These can provide on-site staff with
key information as and when they
need it, in the form of data,
schematics, maps, guidelines or
instructions. Even more remarkable,
smart glasses facilitate advanced,
immersive and remote
collaboration, including virtual
over-the-shoulder coaching, thereby
boosting on-the-job training. In
practice, a worker with smart
glasses can have ready access to
interactive equipment manuals
while repairing an oil rig or bridge
cable, or receive specific directives
such as emergency procedures − and
all of this hands free. The arrival of
new commercially available apparel
designed for the consumer market
such as smart watches is also likely
to spark a further round of
innovative products which will be
adopted wholesale or tailored for
PPE users.
Evidently, ‘smart’ dress is the
style of the future for E&P
operations. l
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HM 51 ad - Nov 2015.indd 1
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